The most abundant holiday currency

Maria Isabel Garcia

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The most abundant holiday currency
[Science Solitaire] The overwhelming currency of the holidays is not the goodies – it is 'wishes,' in particular for happiness

 

Have you ever wondered why the right to pursue happiness is enshrined in many Constitutions as if we could drop or forget “happiness” from our “to be” list? I smile at the thought of swelling self-congratulatory feelings of lawyers and lawmakers who pen and re-articulate things like this just as I smile at scientists who think they have already explained something by naming it.

The overwhelming currency of the holidays is not the goodies, hectic and frantic though the exchanges may be. It is “wishes”, particularly wishes for happiness. We wish for things like joy, happiness that we know abound and are found everywhere but we all put up our arms as if in surrender and in gamble, as to how much of that bounty we could catch in our lives.

This chase has not escaped science. Harvard scientists have been stalking “happiness” and recently, they found that those who “catch” happiness are simply the ones who are present in the moment. And because we, on the average, naturally seem to daydream – mostly on ruminating about the past and worrying about the future, we miss out on the present. Happiness is rendered elusive because our mind is our in-house wretched beast – mostly trapped in the past and seduced by the future. And it just so happens that happiness is hooked on the present – it is not on what has happened or what could happen. It is a position you take on what is happening at the present moment, regardless of where in the corporate, social, economic ladder you are, if you even think of them as ladders at all.

The scientists involved in the study developed an app that tracked the daily activities of 2,250 people who would report what they are doing and feeling at different times of the day.  Their findings revealed that people’s minds swayed from the present moment in their lives 46.9% of the time. The only exceptions where people were more present in the moment were making love, conversing with others and exercising. I can already hear in my head the reactions of people realizing those 3 scientifically validated life activities that are natural nets for happiness.

It is known that daydreaming or mind wandering may improve your creativity but it has also been known, and now reinforced, to push you a bit farther in your inner groove from where you can relish happiness. I am not sure if this is really a clear case of choosing between more chances for happiness and more creative encounters. As always, especially with the human mind, I do not think it is as simple as a Jose Mari Chan song. Creativity also brings happiness, maybe not as a direct shot from the moment, but after perhaps long, even laborious bouts with work that one thinks is worthy of the limited hours of one’s lifetime. That is meaning and that gives us happiness too.

I once described science as a persistent, rigorous yet clumsy meter-reader when it comes to understanding what humans value, yearn for and why.  Our scientific nature makes us approximate the truths we love with tools we can put together. But the traditions of the human soul trudge paths that require and crave for both measure as well as meaning. We are not only measurers but dreamers.

We have the sciences but we also have the humanities – the arts – for those journeys and I personally think that when it comes to approaching meaning, the arts have always had the better, more nurturing – in depth and breadth – vessel for our souls. And fortunately, both traditions can exist in each of us, regardless of what we do in life, and we can all cultivate the art and science of when to wield a ruler and when to revel in music, poetry or images.

A friend of mine said this painting he saw in his hotel in Tokyo, entitled “Love is the answer,” reminded him of me and what I do – i.e., this dance I do with science and the arts for these Science Solitaire columns and all my other lives. If this science column on meaning and happiness is too wordy for you, then maybe this picture can clinch it for you.

Merry Christmas, everyone.  – Rappler.com

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