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Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)
Happiness: How Elusive Thou Art
I have written about happiness at this site before, spoken about it as part of wellness and pursued it, more or less, for four score and ten years. Am I there yet? I dunno. Are you? If not sure, what might constitute a worthy wellness perspective on this great philosophical mystery, the pursuit of happiness? Maybe, as Viktor Frankl and others suggest, it's best not to pursue happiness at all, but to allow it to ensue from good works and other quests that render special moments in time as enrichly and joyful as possible.
Pursuing or ensuing, we probably can't be happy all or even most of the time, providing our minds are not zoned for zero occupancy. What, then, might be done to enable more happiness, or at least to retain the images and sensations of happy times as often as possible?
There is so little we know about happiness, even though almost everyone values it. How much happiness do we really want or need? Is it possible to overdose on it? Or under-dose, for that matter, to the point of getting all wrinkly and mean and maybe dying prematurely of terminal crankiness brought on by happiness deficiencies? Who knows?
Well, some people know, or claim to, based upon their work applying the methods of science to the great and not-so-great questions and puzzles about the phenomenon of happiness.
I've been thinking about happiness more than usual for a few days, ever since receiving a brochure describing a grand conference in Sydney, Australia on "Happiness And Its Causes." The event, sponsored by the Vajrayana Institute, a Buddhist think tank, took place in early June. It attracted a sellout audience of over 3,000 "delegates." The featured speaker was the Dalai Lama. A conference report at the event website noted that "his Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama spoke about 'Happiness in a Material World in 2007.'" Other speakers included noted American happiness experts Richard J. Davidson (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Stephen Post (Case University), Alan Wallace (Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies) and Tal Ben-Shahar and Daniel Gilbert (Harvard) and Martin Seligmann (University of Pennsylvania).
The main thing that captured my attention in the brochure was the list of promises regarding what participants would learn, including but not limited to the following:
- Practical techniques to enhance happiness.
- Tools for a happier life.
- The science behind happiness.
- The answer to the question: Is genuine, lasting happiness possible?
- Also, the answer to this question: Is happiness just a matter of biological luck?
- And this one: Will searching for happiness give life meaning?
- Two more: Can we learn to be happy and is the search for happiness self-indulgent?
Actually, this is just a teaser set of promises outlined in the brochure. I would like to interview some of the "delegates" who attended. If they got what was promised, then I suppose they are now very happy. These happy people might now inform the rest of us about appropriate responses to the above bullet points.
Another event is set for next year. I would have assumed that there was nothing left to learn about happiness, but information about the 2008 event at the sponsor website identifies a few areas evidently overlooked a few months back when the Dalia Lama came calling, such as:
- Practical techniques to enhance happiness at home and in the workplace.
- Strategies to deal more effectively with the problems of daily life.
- Ways to boost your productivity at work.
- Methods by which to improve your relationships.
You may be wondering, “How much does all this happiness costâ€Â and/or “Is it too late for me, since the Dalia Lama has moved on and the 2007 event is over?â€Â No, you can attend NEXT year’s happiness conference. The early-bird registration fee for that is $595 (Australian), but hurry – prices increase after December 20! For extra happiness, add the pre-conference ($295) and post-conference ($145) workshops and throw in the “Happiness 2007â€Â DVD ($99). To get away from the riff-raff, consider stepping up to the “Platinum premium seating optionâ€Â ($200) or, what the hell, go all the way and get yourself a “Gold Passâ€Â ($1,045). You wanna be happy, don't you? Well, it ain't cheap, evidently.
Apparently, making money is not at all in conflict with being happy, and I suppose we can all breathe a sigh of relief about that. The only topic I did not see addressed at the happiness conference was DBRU equivalents. It's hard to understand how anyone can achieve real happiness without a mastery of the DBRU concept and the daily enjoyment of a plethora of actual DBRU equivalents. But, we all have much to learn about happiness.
I wonder if the Dalai Lama addressed DBRUs and, if so, what advice he had about experiencing more such equivalents in our daily lives.
All the best. Be happy, if and when you can, and always look on the bright side of life.
Domain: mentalSubdomain: mental health
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