I read an article a long time ago about a woman in France who was like 120 years old. There have been a lot of theories about what makes people live longer. Colloidal minerals in the water that some tribe in the Andes was drinking sparked a new industry. There was a theory about the altitude, and we've all heard about how a macrobiotic diet and being nearly emaciated can make a person live longer (even though you'll miss out on all the yumminess of good food.) This article, however, said the single most important thing to long life was a feeling of usefulness and close bonds in the community. Antithetical to our practice of cloistering the elderly away in a home and "visiting" on occasion.
Gilbert says, in his interview:
Probably the single best predictor of a person's happiness is the quality and extent of their social relationships...a better predictor of happiness than your physical health. If you had to choose between being paralyzed from the waist down and having no friends whatsoever, you would probably be better off being paraplegic than friendless.
So it would seem that being happy makes a person live longer. Makes perfect sense. I mean, if a person were unhappy, what would be the point in living to be 120? Problem is, according to Gilbert, people don't realize this and instead pursue money and fame, indulge in sex and food, thinking those things will bring them happiness.
Not surprisingly, if our relationships with other people are the predictor of happiness, then improving those relationships make us happy. Gilbert says:
Altruism is a social act, an interpersonal act. It makes people feel good about their place in the world, good about others and it makes other esteem them.
When people give of themselves to others,and are recognized for it, they experience lots of happiness and increase in self-esteem. Interestingly, though, we've just done a study that shows that when people are offered the opportunity to do something selfish or something altruistic, they take the selfish option by and large. Culture has told them this is what they should do to be happy, but if you force them to take the altruistic option, they're much happier.
As VolunteerMatch.org demonstrates, opportunities to help others are abundant. We just have to take them. A heck of a lot cheaper than therapy! Not that we are meant to be happy all the time although I rather like the idea of a world that revolves around helping other people. It's important to recognize that unhappiness is not something to be afraid of. Unhappiness is a powerful indicator that we should pay attention to and learn from.
We are meant to be happy, and we are meant to suffer. We're supposed to suffer when we are encountering circumstances that aren't good for us.
It's like the situation we're in with the environment. Man has been manipulating the environment since we got here. There is no "going back." Back to what?
Women were oppressed, children were used like cattle, people raped, pillaged, and plundered, everybody lived to about the age of twenty-seven and had bad teeth! What we have right now is marvelous. It's far from perfect, but our job is to make it better - not to go backward, but to go forward.
Sure, we are faced with great challenges in the future but WE ARE TALKING ABOUT IT. I'm talking about it and everywhere you go, people are talking about the environment. I think it's amazing. I think it's inspiring. And not just talking, people everywhere are taking action. See, life is like sailing a ship. Sometimes we may go off course, but we keep going. Together, we steer this ship into the future. Like unhappiness, if we pay attention, we can use bad situations we encounter are navigational elements. Don't go that way!
They instructors in yoga classes always say that we become more rigid as we get older, mentally as well as physically. It seems to me that children, in addition to being more flexible, are more in touch with what makes them happy. They don't seem to have any trouble figuring out happiness. Seth Godin wrote on his blog that people get used to saying "no" for example, and even in the face of overwhelming evidence that "yes" is the right answer - the positive answer that will bring happiness to everyone - some people will still say no. So what happens to us that makes us lose touch with such basic intuition? The difference between children and adults is more than anything, our length of time in the world. Society and culture are a much larger figure in an adult's life. We're always being told what's good for us, our country and the economy. The most important thing we can do is to decide those things for ourselves.
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