Today Lifehacker (have you seen Lifehacker? withouttalent, I think you would like Lifehacker) posted an interesting poll: What makes you happy? There are a few things about it I found noteworthy, but I’m going to cut so that my analysis doesn’t potentially influence your vote.
First, family wins (followed by spouse, which is sort of still family, followed by friends). These top three all demonstrate how cultivating human relationships is most important to many people. It also, unfortunately, illustrates how people can be so stupid so often; as long as you’re with like-minded others, you’re happy, so who cares about truth. In a sense, if other people agree with you, you’re not wrong.
But all of that is merely tangential to my original point, which is that there is an inexplicable joy people derive from having a family. I am personally extremely wary of having children, because like most people I fear change. In particular, I know that life as I know it will largely end, and a new era will begin: an era of diapers and monthly clothes shopping and childproofing everything. I’m not excited about it, to say the least. Knowing that there will also be joy in the whole endeavor helps to mute the terror.
My choice, freedom, took a distant fifth (behind “My empty soul knows no happiness,” which probably shouldn’t count). I voted for it because it was the closest option to “control,” which is at minimum something that is a prerequisite for happiness for me, at least in practice. No one enjoys life shitting all over them with nothing they can do to stop it. That’s pretty much the definition of unhappiness. I suppose it might be worse if you could have done something to stop it (regret)… but on the flip side of that coin, making no decisions and having everything turn out right seems completely empty to me. I can only be satisfied, and thus happy, if I chose my path and things worked out (or at least appeared to do so) as a result.
My second choice, productivity, did surprisingly poorly (Lifehacker is all about productivity: “Computers make us more productive. Yeah, right. Lifehacker recommends the software downloads and web sites that actually save time. Don’t live to geek; geek to live.”), coming in behind both “other” and “money/wealth.” Personally, productivity is related to freedom as described above; I have an insatiable need to achieve, and getting things done is the only way I can stay satisfied. It seems to show that productivity is a means to an end for more people than it is an end in and of itself: hard work is merely the path to affluence.
Lastly, and most deliciously, the lowest scoring answer was security. Obviously, Lifehacker denizens are not deluded about sacrificing freedom for increased security (imagined or no) from our elusive America-hating antagonists.
A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.
—Francoise Rene Auguste Chateaubriand