Success and Happiness - III

Health is such a strange thing. When you are not in good health, you are sure that all you need to be happy is to be restored to normal. When you are normal, though, it seems irrelevant to your happiness.

Low levels of serotonin and the consequent depression is like that. When you are depressed, to not be depressed is sufficient happiness. When your mood stabilizes, though, it's just business as usual, no great cause for joy.

Endorphins, or the pleasure chemical, would seem different at first sight. The name itself - derived as it is from 'endogenous morphine' or, in other words, morphine-like chemicals naturally produced by the body - seems to indicate that it would give you joyous highs. Though, in fact, the morphine-like behavior of endorphins is as a pain-killer which is how morphine was seen originally. But, yes, endorphins give you a high much like morphine does.

Unfortunately, like with Serotonin, there are people whose bodies produce lesser endorphins than others causing them to be less likely to be happy than others. As with Serotonin, other than medication to boost endorphins, they CAN do things which IMPROVE their happiness.

Endorphins seem primarily kicked off by pain. Naturally, since they seem to be Nature's painkillers. So, exercise is one of the ways to get an endorphin rush. Fast walking, running, jogging, squats, yoga, yada yada, yes, but for more than 30 minutes which is when the body feels stretched enough to feel the need to release endorphins.

Burn your mouth with spicy foods, or endure the bitterness of dark chocolate and you get an endorphin rush. If you are lucky enough to actually LIKE them, does not matter. The body still thinks you ought to be in pain and produces endorphins. (Ahem! Apparently, they have flavonols or some such which help endorphin production. Chemistry again rears its ugly head, as it does quite often with Nityananda!) Wine helps, too, apparently, but you really do not need to get falling down drunk for endorphins to kick in.

Apparently, watching drama - if you like them that is - also helps endorphin release. I do not know whether it is because watching other people in pain sets off a sympathetic response or because watching them is SO painful that the body releases its painkillers. This, perhaps, explains the addictive nature of those painful 'mega-serials'.

Strangely enough, there are some not so painful options to get an endorphin rush. Like meditation - though I suppose, for most people, sitting still and not being judgmental, even of their own thoughts, IS probably the most painful thing to do. Acupuncture, Acupressure and massage could also be seen as having their own component of pain, explaining why they set off endorphin release.

But...laughter? And NOT laughter AT you but YOU laughing. THAT sets off endorphin release too, so perhaps it is time to dust off those comedies and, even, Tom and Jerry! A long, hot bath, smells of lavender...

What role does success have in all this? Unless, of course, you are intending to become a topnotch athlete or a wine-taster or some such?

Time! If you let a pursuit of your goals to fill up all your available time so that you have no time for exercise or meditation or long hot baths; if your mind cannot set aside that pursuit and sink into that comedy or, even, that mega-serial; if you are in the 'gulp down a power-lunch and on to the next PPT' mode always...

If you have no time to smell the roses...

You will spend a lifetime chasing success by depriving yourself of your daily dose of small pleasures.

A happy life is not a destination where you arrive at with great and concerted effort. It is an accumulation of happy moments across your whole life. A pursuit of happiness is a pursuit to maximize those happy moments in your life.

What would be the meaning of a success which reduces the sum total of possible happy moments?

Success and Happiness - II

I try to find a bit more about happiness and, presto, Chemistry rears its ugly head. As usual. I mean, I escape a BSc in Chemistry only to land in Chemical Engineering so I should sort of have expected it, I suppose. Especially since escaping into an MBA in Finance only landed me in a fertilizer company and back to dealing in calculations relating to chemical reactions all over again!

So, apparently, there are these hormones which are related to happiness. Whether they are only the body's messengers of happiness or whether they are the cause for why you feel happy, I am sort of unsure. But, yeah, these chemicals - serotonin, endorphins, dopamine and oxytocin - are apparently what give you the highs of joy.

Though, really speaking, this serotonin appears to be more a anti-unhappiness hormone. Way back in my MBA days, there was this motivational theory that said that there were Health Factors and Motivational factors in any work environment. Health factors were those which demotivated by their absence but their presence would not motivate. I mean, like, if you are a tech whiz in Chennai and if your office does not have a functioning A/c, you'd quite likely quit asap. But does a job advertisement saying "Fully air-conditioned office" make you want to queue up for a job? This serotonin is somewhat like that to happiness. If its level in your body is low, you feel depressed and unhappy; the presence does not make you actively happy. (Yeah, like shade in a hot sun, IF you have just been depressed and get to the point of not being depressed, it could feel like a joy at that time.)

Yes, from what I understand, treatment for depression IS treatment to up the serotonin levels. AND depression due to naturally low serotonin levels IS a PHYSICAL condition and HAS to be treated by medication. You don't just tell the chap that it is 'all in the mind', so buck up and think positive AND expect that person to be a ray of sunshine from then on.

Now, it is one thing to say that a person like me, who starts off with the uncanny ability to derive  different answers every time he adds two and two, is not going to become a Ramanujam in mathematics. But it is quite another to say that I will never narrow down my answers to the one right figure no matter how long I try. In other words, the fact that I am prone to depression does not mean that I can in no way REDUCE the frequency, duration or extent to which I get depressed. NOR does the fact that I am not naturally prone to depression mean that I cannot mess up my life enough to GET to the point of being permanently depressed.

Google will tell you that exposure to sunlight, some foods, exercise yada yada will help you push up your serotonin levels. (Apparently tryptophan-rich foods, in tandem with carbs, improves serotonin levels. At last! I KNOW why we TamBrams are so fond of curd rice - dairy products being a source of tryptophan!) AND, yes, reducing stress and anxiety in your life is a great help to avert low serotonin levels.

The quest for success, then, IS a possible source of anxiety and stress. For one, operating well outside your comfort levels is always stressful. Understand that growth happens when you venture outside your comfort levels...but THAT should be in a manner which eventually EXTENDS the ambit of your comfort zone. For a classical singer to sing playback in the movies is one thing; for a tone-deaf person to try to become a concert singer is another! Doing things that you are good at doing, and like doing, does not leave you feeling anxious and stressed.

To the extent that the goals that you set for yourself are within your control - as in things that YOU yourself do and where the achievement is measurable by yourself - the stress levels are lesser. You can assess how well you have written a code to do a certain task; comes to giving a speech, it is the reaction of the audience that determines how well you have done it and, so, success depends not on you but on others.

Setting far-out goals without setting intermediate markers to measure progress is an easy way to depression. It is all very well to set yourself a target of becoming a CEO by 45. But how do you know you are satisfactorily on your way at 30, if you have set no intermediate target? THAT way lies anxiety, that way lies depression.

If the quest for success is not to also become the path to unhappiness, it is important to set your goals in an area where you expect to be in your comfort zone sooner of later; where you have multiple goals - one set of personal improvement which gives you controllable achievements and one set of external goals; and to have your goals bite-sized so that you can have a sense of achievement along the way and not merely at the destination.

Or, of course, you can tell Life, "I am just along for the ride!" If you could do that, though, you'd have abandoned this post as soon as you saw the title!

Success and happiness

Through my younger days, I was essentially taught that success MEANT happiness. Yeah, success then was all about getting enough education credentials to get into Engineering or medicine - the only two certain means of being employed. There really was no difference between the success and happiness when put that way. I mean, when success means avoiding potential starvation, you hardly see it as different from happiness. True, there were stories about people starving in order to pursue their art or their love or whatever but they did not really seem to be singing and dancing with happiness because they were starving.

The problem is that, once you are confident that the wolf is not parked outside the door (In other words, when starvation is not a perpetual threat), the fact that you are eating does not make you actively happy. I mean, yeah, it is nice that you CAN eat, unless of course obesity is causing you to go on a diet, but you see no reason to be singing and dancing around the house because you are NOT starving either.

Such, indeed, is the problem with happiness. When you don't have it, you are unhappy about it. When you first get it, you are happy. THEN you start getting unhappy about the other things you do not have.

Success is achieving the goals that you tried to achieve. Happiness is a state of mind. Now, WHEN you achieve a goal, you feel happy about the achievement, alright. THAT state of mind does not last forever though. The mind is a funny beast, it never remains content in one state of mind. It keeps oscillating up and down all the time. So, if success is what you choose as the WAY to happiness, then you should keep setting goals and keep achieving them. An iffy proposition - somewhat like winning at a slot machine and having to KEEP winning in order to maintain that high!

Of course, the mind oscillates about a mean. Like, the man who is starving - he could get a meal every other day and feel happy but the overall average happiness he feels is bound to be lower than the man who is sure of his food. So, yes, some successes CAN push up the average happiness levels. The trick is to know whether the goals YOU set ARE the sort of goals which are pushing up your mean happiness levels OR merely spikes around the same old level.

Philosophy, of course, tells you to control the mind. Indian philosophy is all about keeping the mind 'free from the pairs of opposites' - pleasure-pain, like-dislike, comfort-discomfort, yada yada. AND, for those of you know find Indian anything not worth attention unless duly ratified by the West, dear old Rudyard Kipling also says, "...if you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same...". So there! THAT way, the mind ceases oscillating and 'state of mind' is not a fickle thing any longer.

But, you see, sorrow and joy are also one of those pairs of opposites. THAT stable state of mind...you could call it peace but can you call it happiness? The religious philosophers call it Bliss OR Nirvana OR some such.

In the here-and-now of ordinary folks like you and me, for whom these pairs of opposites ARE the guiding lights of life...what sort of success will lead to lasting happiness?

And can you call it success if it leaves you feeling unhappy?

High Ground

"I don't understand why people get so worked up about what celebrities say or do?"

"When have you understood anything?"

There...the stage was set as usual! Things have come to such a pass that I'm actually happy when the first insult has been hurled my way. Otherwise, it is like that Chinese torture where the victim suffers the torment of not knowing when the next drop of water will fall on him. I am so on tenterhooks about when I am going to be insulted that it is actually a relief to hear the insult.

"That's all very well," I said, "but why do people do that?"

"Well, you mutt!" said my friend cordially. "People like feeling that they are important. Unfortunately, most of us are not and, what's more, we know it."

Well, so what's new? Not all of us can be moving and shaking the world. The world will shake to pieces if we did that, considering how little consensus there is about what direction to move and shake it in.

"So?"

"The next best thing is to feel superior to someone who you think has become important, no?"

"To do that, you would have become important yourself. If you can..."

"Not really! To become SOCIALLY important, yes, you need to be more rich or more famous or both in order to feel superior. Anyway, pulling celebrities down on social media is not going to make you socially important...unless you already have some element of celebrity already. THEN you can use this to build on your existing celebrity."

"But I'm not talking of..."

"...existing lesser celebrities but of ordinary folks, I know. The point is that, if you cannot claim the social high ground, you can claim the intellectual high ground, perhaps."

"Become a scientist or..."

"Huh! Nonsense! Start making fun of a Alia Bhat for not knowing the PM of India, say. For as long as it lasts, you can feel comfortably superior to a celebrity."

"But...but...she probably knows now..."

"Idiot! I am not giving you guidance on how to do it now. Only an example of how it works. You can make fun of Shilpa Shetty, say, trying to learn how to treat a pet dog by reading Orwell's 'Animal Farm'; or Tom Cruise's scientology beliefs...anything that makes you feel that you are more intelligent, more knowledgeable, more rational than these celebrities. Makes you feel a warm sense of importance which you probably do not feel by showing up the same lack of knowledge in, say, your nephew."

"Hmmm!" This was intriguing. I mean, I was sort of resigned to feeling unimportant in the general scheme of things but it looks like I was missing a bet. I really was, you know. I mean, why did it not strike me that I knew of these people and their comments because THEY got publicity by criticizing celebrities. There...this was interesting!

"Any other way?"

"The thing that most people find the easiest. Take the moral high ground!"

"Moral high ground? That's tough, no? I mean, I have got to be moral myself..."

My friend started laughing hysterically. When he was done, he said,"Are you the celebrity? Who knows anything about you?"

You know, that never struck me! What would anyone know about me? There was no way they could call me out for hypocrisy. This moral high ground business would be a piece of cake, really!

"How do I..."

"Simple! Any celebrity will have character quirks - rude, arrogant, wishy-washy, you name it! Otherwise, you have the lifestyle things - anti-climate change for using cars, not being vegan, say...things like that. The easiest is language...almost all may end up using some words that can be racist, sexist, whatever..."

"Those are all real issues, no?"

"They are, yes! But do not confuse morality with the moral high ground. All of us have moral imperatives but almost all of us fail them in some form or the other. Do all of us do nothing that adversely affect climate? Are we all conscious of all the words and metaphors which may have originally been racist, that we never use them? To lack moral intentions makes you immoral. But to look around to judge and criticize people based on such things, whether they intended it immorally or not, is to try to seize the moral high ground."

Aha! Now I knew what to do. But...

"Does this work only on celebrities?"

"Haven't you see it used daily? It works on anyone and people tend to use it on almost everyone who they see as better than them. That way, they can keep up a semblance of personal superiority."

He looked at me speculatively.

"Well, as far as you are concerned, you can use it on everyone. Hard to see you being able to consider anyone as being inferior to you."

"Oh, Yeah? Then why is it that you are always trying to seize the intellectual high ground on me?"

"Touche," he said.

YAY! For once I had the last word in an argument!