Traditionally, self-help gurus tell you not to get stuck on having fun. Fun is not happiness, they point out. The latter is deep while fun is transient and only on the surface.
Moving into a nicer house or buying a bigger car or new phone may give you an ego boost. Knocking back endless drinks may give you a high. But none of it will make you happy in the long term. That’s because material possessions or fleeting moments of fun can’t solve life’s real problems or stem your worries about your children or ageing parents or money or your own mortality.
Once the car’s parked and the shopping put away, the feeling of bliss ends and you’re back at square one, say the gurus. You’re no happier than you were before you began funning. The real magic, or true happiness, lies in making healthy choices and growing -- emotionally, morally and physically, they add.
But isn’t happiness a matter of having your needs met -- whatever they may be? And isn’t that totally subjective? One person may feel the need to spend all their time with their children, another pursuing a life of corporate success while a third may find joy in driving or even just admiring the cars sitting in their driveway? Or the Batman comics they’ve collected over the years. Who decides what’s fun and what’s frivolous?
Neglecting your family or your work or health will certainly not bring you happiness. But nor is it fun. No one wants to do that -- deliberately. At the same time, you can be a model parent or child or employee -- and still be stressed. You can diligently save for your old age and get regular health checks -- and still be depressed.
You can tell yourself that you will be happy when you make more money/meet the right partner/get your dream job or start your own homestay. But there’s no guarantee that any of that will happen. For all you know, you could drop dead tomorrow. Alternatively, you could lead a long dutiful, restrained life planning what you will do, someday, for happiness only to realise that you’ve become too infirm to do anything on your bucket list. And immediately plunge into deeper discontent.
Which is why behavioral scientist Mike Rucker suggests prioritising fun over happiness. In his book The Fun Habit, he says the pursuit of happiness has begun overwhelming us. Men and media bombard us with so many daily messages of motivation that we’ve become overly concerned about finding happiness. We ignore the things around us that already give us joy because we think happiness exists on a more elevated plane and lies way ahead of us. And that creates more anxiety than anticipation.
Instead, Rucker suggests that we audit how we currently spend our time and eliminate or delegate activities that we don’t enjoy but see as ‘good for us’. “Happiness is a byproduct of fun,” he says. So when we do things that we see as fun, over time, we’ll perceive our lives as being happier.
And if that means choosing rock climbing over reading newspaper columns, so be it.
Shampa Dhar-Kamath is Faculty-in-Residence and Communication Coach at Harappa Education. She can be reached at shampadhar@gmail.com.