05 our pursuit of happiness

Our Pursuit of Happiness

We chase after it, when it is waiting all about us

“Are you happy?” I asked my brother, Lan, one day. “Yes. No. It depends what you mean,” he said.

“Then tell me,” I said, “when was the last time you think you were happy?”

“April 1967,” he said.

It served me right for putting a serious question to someone who has joked his way through life. But Lan’s answer reminded me that when we think about happiness, we usually think of something extraordinary, a pinnacle¹ of sheer delight---and those pinnacles² seem to get rarer the older we get.

For a child, happiness has a magical quality. I remember making hide-outs in newly cut hay, playing cops and robbers in the woods, getting a speaking part in the school play. Of course, kids also experience lows, but their delight at such peaks of pleasure as winning a race or getting a new bike is unreserved.

In the teenage years the concept of happiness changes. Suddenly it’s conditional³ on such things as excitement, love, popularity and whether that zit will clear up before prom night. I can still feel the agony of not being invited to a party that almost everyone else was going to. But I also recall the ecstasy⁴ of being plucked from obscurity at another event to dance with a John Travolta look-alike.

In adulthood⁵ the things that bring profound joy---birth, love, marriage---also bring responsibility and the risk of loss. Love may not last, * isn’t always good, loved ones die. For adults, happiness is complicated.

My dictionary defines happy as “lucky” or “fortunate”, but I think a better definition of happiness is “the capacity for enjoyment”. The more we can enjoy what we have, the happier we are. It’s easy to overlook the pleasure we get from loving and being loved, the company of friends, the freedom to live where we please, even good health.

You never know where happiness will turn up next. When I asked friends what makes them happy, some mentioned seemingly insignificant⁶ moments. “I hate shopping,” one friend said. “But there’s this clerk who always chats and really cheers me up.”

Another friend loves the telephone. “Every time it rings, I know someone is thinking about me.”

I get a thrill from driving. One day I stopped to let a school bus turn onto a side road. The driver grinned and gave me a thumbs-up sign. We were two allies in a world of mad motorists. It made me smile.

We all experience moments like these. Too few of us register them as happiness.

Psychologists tell us that to be happy we need a blend of enjoyable leisure time and satisfying work. I doubt that my great-grandmother, who raised 14 children and took in washing, had much of either. She did have a network of close friends and family, and maybe this is what fulfilled her. If she was happy with what she had, perhaps it was because she didn’t expect life to be very different.

We, on the other hand, with so many choices and such pressure to succeed in every area, have turned happiness into one more thing we “gotta have”. We’re so self-conscious about our “right” to it that it’s making us miserable⁷. So we chase it and equate⁸ it with wealth and success, without noticing that the people who have those things aren’t necessarily happier.

While happiness may be more complex for us, the solution is the same as ever. Happiness isn’t about what happens to us---it’s about how we perceive what happens to us. It’s the knack⁹ of finding a positive for every negative, and viewing a setback¹⁰ as a challenge. It’s not wishing for what we don’t have, but enjoying what we do possess.

1 pinnacle   

n.尖塔，尖顶，山峰；(喻)顶峰

参考例句：

• Now he is at the very pinnacle of his career.现在他正值事业中的顶峰时期。
• It represents the pinnacle of intellectual capability.它代表了智能的顶峰。

2 pinnacles   

顶峰( pinnacle的名词复数 )； 顶点； 尖顶； 小尖塔

参考例句：

• What would be the pinnacles of your acting and music? 对你而言什麽代表你的演技和音乐的巅峰？
• On Skye's Trotternish Peninsula, basalt pinnacles loom over the Sound of Raasay. 在斯开岛的特洛登尼许半岛，玄武岩尖塔俯瞰着拉塞海峡。

3 conditional   

adj.条件的，带有条件的

参考例句：

• My agreement is conditional on your help.你肯帮助我才同意。
• There are two forms of most-favored-nation treatment:conditional and unconditional.最惠国待遇有两种形式:有条件的和无条件的。

4 ecstasy   

n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷

参考例句：

• He listened to the music with ecstasy.他听音乐听得入了神。
• Speechless with ecstasy,the little boys gazed at the toys.小孩注视着那些玩具，高兴得说不出话来。

5 adulthood   

n.成年，成人期

参考例句：

• Some infantile actions survive into adulthood.某些婴儿期的行为一直保持到成年期。
• Few people nowadays are able to maintain friendships into adulthood.如今很少有人能将友谊维持到成年。

6 insignificant   

adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的

参考例句：

• In winter the effect was found to be insignificant.在冬季，这种作用是不明显的。
• This problem was insignificant compared to others she faced.这一问题与她面临的其他问题比较起来算不得什么。

7 miserable   

adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的

参考例句：

• It was miserable of you to make fun of him.你取笑他，这是可耻的。
• Her past life was miserable.她过去的生活很苦。

8 equate   

v.同等看待，使相等

参考例句：

• You can't equate passing examination and being intelligent.你不能把考试及格看成是聪明。
• You cannot equate his poems with his plays.你不可以把他的诗歌和他的剧本相提并论。

9 knack   

n.诀窍，做事情的灵巧的，便利的方法

参考例句：

• He has a knack of teaching arithmetic.他教算术有诀窍。
• Making omelettes isn't difficult,but there's a knack to it.做煎蛋饼并不难，但有窍门。

10 setback   

n.退步，挫折，挫败

参考例句：

• Since that time there has never been any setback in his career.从那时起他在事业上一直没有遇到周折。
• She views every minor setback as a disaster.她把每个较小的挫折都看成重大灾难。