The Happiness Chronicles
Last month seemed to be the month of happiness for me, or you can say the analysis of happiness. First, I was asked to write a few paragraphs about what happiness means to me for an upcoming book by Tony Hseih, the CEO of Zappos. Then, ironically, I came across Barbara Ehrenreich's latest work, "Bright-Sided: How The Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America," which was followed by Marc Buckingham's "Find Your Strongest Life" and his new Huffington Post series about women and happiness.
It didn't end there. While browsing the latest tabloids at the airport, there it was again on the cover of Time Magazine staring me in the face: "The State of The American Woman: A new poll shows why they are more powerful- but less happy."
OK, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize the trend here. The pursuit and analysis of happiness is obviously human, something that isn't necessarily timely or based on gender but has been around since… well, I could go as far as to say Adam and Eve.
So as my curiosity grew, the Googling began. All the recent female happiness hoopla seemed to have stemmed from a paper, "The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness," published in May by two University of Pennsylvania economists, Justin Wolfers and Betsey Stevenson. Their findings revealed that despite the feminist movement, women have become significantly less happy since the 1970s.
That's a pretty bold statement to make and it had some reacting in a not so happy way. But as the husband and wife team reiterated when I spoke to them, (see the interview below) they're simply the number crunchers and they call `em the way they see `em:
So now that we women have had the bleak reality of happiness shoved into our faces, what's next? Where are our cheerleaders, our guides taking us back on the right path of our male counterparts? How are we supposed to catch up? Or maybe the question is, should we?
Well, I don't have the answer to all of life's big questions. One thing I do know is that in the midst of figuring out what happiness meant to me, I started getting a bit of a headache. I took a break for a bit. I did some other work, worked out and went to dinner with some friends. At the end of the day, I felt grateful. I stopped thinking about happiness, and you know what? That made me happy.