HAPPINESS?
Yes, this one comes with a question mark.
And for a very good reason.
You see, happiness sounds beautiful. Who wouldn't want to be happy?
But I am going to get straight to the point.
I have always suspected that happiness is one of those concepts we humans have invented to make our existence unnecessarily complicated. And, conveniently, to give other people an excellent opportunity to convince us that we are constantly missing something.
A better job. A better relationship. A bigger house. A more interesting life. A new orange watch.
Apparently, there is always something else we need before we can finally declare ourselves fully happy.
Very convenient, isn't it?
Especially if you happen to be selling the missing thing.
But don't worry, dear reader. I have absolutely no intention of depressing you today. Quite the opposite.
I suspect that by the end of this post, some of you might feel a little less anxious about this exhausting obligation to be happy.
Perhaps we will even find something rather pleasant somewhere between happiness and unhappiness.
Peace.
But first, I need to tell you about a little experiment I conducted recently.
And no, before anyone gets excited, it was not particularly scientific.
Are You Happy?
Lately, I have developed a rather entertaining habit.
Instead of asking my friends the usual How are you?, which inevitably produces that wonderfully polite and completely uninteresting Good, thanks, and you?, I have started asking them something else.
Are you happy?
You should see their faces.
Seriously.
Some of them are absolutely hilarious.
It's almost as though I have interrupted a perfectly functioning human being and forced them to open a file they haven't looked at in twenty years.
Suddenly, silence.
A strange expression.
An existential crisis developing somewhere behind the eyes.
All because of one little question.
And here comes the paradox.
If I don't particularly believe in happiness as a concept, why on earth do I keep asking people whether they are happy?
Very simple.
Because I know that this question makes people wonder whether they are actually living the lives they want. Whether they are being faithful to themselves. Whether they have somehow confused what society expects of them with what they genuinely desire.
And, to be completely honest, because I am getting rather bored of certain conversations.
I really don't need another forty-minute explanation about someone's new car, their orange watch, their mother-in-law, their plans to buy a supermega helicopter, or how next weekend they are meeting another couple with children so that the children can entertain each other and leave the parents alone.
On one of the few days those parents actually have time to spend with their children.
Anyway.
Human beings are fascinating.
So, one week, I decided to take my little experiment further.
I asked twenty-four people I happened to meet whether they were happy.
Just like that.
No introduction. No polite preparation.
Are you happy?
Only two answered immediately.
One said, "Yes, man! I'm super excited about my new job!"
The other simply said, "Yes. I love my life."
The remaining twenty-two...
Uff.
Some looked at me as though I had escaped from a psychiatric hospital.
Others went completely silent.
And a few seemed to be seriously reconsidering every decision they had made since childhood.
What a wonderfully strange society.
We spend so much time talking about the importance of happiness, and yet when someone asks whether we are happy, most of us don't seem to know what to say.
Although, thinking about it, perhaps the problem was my question.
What exactly was I asking them to measure?
Their excitement? Their satisfaction with life? Their emotional state at that particular second?
And if someone had been crying that morning but laughing by lunchtime, what would the correct answer be?
Interesting.
I had asked twenty-four people to define their existence through a single answer, without even defining what I was measuring.
Very impressive scientific methodology.
But this made me think about something else.
Perhaps we have become so obsessed with determining whether we are happy that we have forgotten to ask ourselves what happiness actually means.
Supermega Happy
There is someone very important in my life who often asks me whether I am happy.
And the funny thing is that, despite everything I have just written, I always answer with enormous enthusiasm.
"YEEEEES! SUPERMEGA HAPPY!"
Usually accompanied by some jumping.
Very sophisticated behaviour, I know.
But the strange thing is that I can give that answer even when my life is a complete mess.
Even when I am worried.
Even when I feel lonely.
Even when I have absolutely no idea what I am doing.
And I remember one particular night when I began to understand why.
A few years ago, I went travelling alone through the Middle East.
At the time, I was going through a rather confusing period of my life. I had very little money, quite a few personal problems, and an extraordinary ability to get myself into situations that most sensible people would probably avoid.
Including getting lost in the desert.
More than once.
I know.
Quite a talent.
One evening, after wandering around rather unsuccessfully, I came across a small camp made of improvised shelters and sheets.
There was a fire.
And since the desert becomes absolutely freezing at night, I was much more interested in finding somewhere warm to sleep than in questioning the architectural standards of the establishment.
I asked whether I could stay.
And that night, I met a woman.
I won't tell you too many details about her, out of respect for her privacy. We separated the following morning, and strangely enough, I don't even remember her name.
But I remember her story.
She was a language teacher who had fallen in love with a man from a country that was in conflict with her own.
Her family had rejected the relationship.
She had ended up travelling from place to place, teaching languages and doing volunteer work in exchange for somewhere to live.
Eventually, she had told the man she loved that they should separate.
Their circumstances were too complicated. Their relationship was not accepted. And she didn't want them both to continue suffering.
A painful but apparently reasonable decision.
Except...
There was one little detail.
A month earlier, she had discovered that she was pregnant with his child.
And she hadn't spoken to him for three or four months.
Uff.
And there we were.
Two women who had absolutely no idea what they were doing with their lives, sitting beside a fire in the middle of the desert, under a sky so full of stars that it almost seemed ridiculous.
She was frightened about her future.
I was frightened about mine.
Neither of us had much money.
Neither of us knew where we were going.
And somehow, we spent one of the most beautiful evenings I can remember.
We talked for hours.
About love. About family. About fear. About the absurd decisions we sometimes make thinking they will protect us from suffering.
We laughed.
We cried.
And at some point, we realised something rather curious.
We were happy.
Not because our problems had disappeared.
Not because we had suddenly found solutions.
But because, despite everything, we had lived enough to have something interesting to tell each other.
And there was something extraordinarily beautiful about that.
Two strangers, with two completely different lives, meeting by chance in the middle of nowhere and discovering that even their most painful experiences had brought them something worth sharing.
The following morning, she woke up early.
Before leaving, she said something I have never forgotten.
"Thank you for appearing last night. I have to go. I'm going to get the love of my life back."
And she left.
Just like that.
I have absolutely no idea what happened to her afterwards.
But I remember crying that morning.
I was happy for her.
I was happy for myself.
And I was still completely lost in my own life.
Nothing had been solved.
Nothing had become particularly easier.
Yet, for some strange reason, I felt at peace.
And I think that distinction matters.
Happiness Apparently Involves Getting Hit With Sticks
A few months ago, I had another rather interesting experience.
I went to practise Shaolin kung fu.
But proper kung fu.
Not the kind where you spend an hour learning a few elegant movements and then go home feeling spiritually enlightened.
No.
The kind where you wake up at five in the morning, train for hours, fight, stretch muscles you didn't know existed, and go to bed around ten completely exhausted.
And occasionally someone hits you with a stick.
In the stomach.
In the arms.
In the legs.
Wonderful holiday.
And do you know what?
I was incredibly happy.
My body hurt.
I was exhausted.
Sometimes I wanted to disappear into my bed and never move again.
But mentally, I felt an extraordinary sense of calm.
Which is rather inconvenient for the theory that happiness consists of feeling good all the time.
Because apparently I was voluntarily paying to experience things that most people spend their lives trying to avoid.
And enjoying it.
What interested me most about the training was not the physical suffering itself, but what happened to my mind when I stopped fighting against every uncomfortable sensation.
Of course, I am not suggesting that being hit with sticks is a particularly efficient route to happiness.
Please don't misunderstand me.
Although I am sure someone could create a very expensive wellness retreat around that idea.
What fascinated me was the discipline of learning to experience discomfort without immediately becoming its prisoner.
The body becomes tired.
The muscles hurt.
Fear appears.
Frustration appears.
And yet, with practice, you can learn to observe those sensations without allowing every one of them to control your behaviour.
And this made me think about how strangely we treat our emotions in everyday life.
We become sad.
Then we become upset because we are sad.
Then anxious because we are upset.
Then frustrated because apparently we are supposed to be happy.
Wonderful.
We have managed to turn one unpleasant emotion into an entire emotional orchestra.
And all because we cannot accept that sometimes we simply don't feel particularly good.
The Strange Problem With Joy
One of the things I found particularly interesting during my time practising kung fu was its connection with traditional Chinese philosophy and medicine.
In traditional Chinese medicine, emotions are understood through patterns of balance and imbalance within the body, expressed through the concept of qi.
Qi is traditionally described as vital energy, although it is important to distinguish this philosophical and medical concept from energy as defined and measured in physics.
They are not the same thing.
And what I find fascinating is that, within this traditional framework, even joy can become problematic when it is excessive.
Joy is associated with the Heart system, anger with the Liver, grief with the Lung, fear with the Kidney and excessive rumination with the Spleen.
Unlike the often fragmented approach of Western medicine, traditional Chinese medicine considers the body and emotions as interconnected parts of a whole.
And I find it fascinating how, in our obsession with understanding every individual organ, we sometimes forget that they all belong to the same human being.
Think about it.
Have you ever been so excited about something that you couldn't sleep?
Your heart races.
Your mind starts imagining seventeen different futures.
You are absolutely delighted.
And suddenly it is three in the morning, and you are lying in bed wondering whether your entire life is about to change.
Very happy.
Very excited.
Absolutely no peace whatsoever.
Meanwhile, sometimes you can cry for an hour, feel completely miserable, and afterwards experience an extraordinary sense of relief.
So which emotional state is better?
The excitement that keeps you awake all night?
Or the sadness that eventually leaves you feeling calm?
I don't know.
And perhaps that's the interesting part.
Traditional Chinese medicine does not simply divide emotions into good and bad. Its framework places considerable importance on their balance, movement and intensity.
Perhaps crying does more than release tears, and qi represents something far more complex than what Western science has learned to measure. Either way, I find it fascinating how our emotional experiences and physical states seem to be in constant conversation, searching for some kind of equilibrium.
And I find that perspective much more appealing than the idea that happiness is the permanent accumulation of pleasant emotions.
Because perhaps we have misunderstood the objective.
Perhaps we are not supposed to eliminate sadness, fear, anger or uncertainty.
Perhaps we are supposed to learn how to experience them without losing ourselves completely.
And this, dear reader, brings me to physics.
Finally.
I know some of you were probably wondering when the particles were going to appear.
The Quantum State of Happiness
There is something in quantum mechanics that I find particularly interesting when thinking about happiness.
The concept of a pure quantum state.
A pure state describes a quantum system whose state can be represented by a state vector.
When I first thought about connecting this concept with happiness, I imagined a perfectly isolated particle, completely undisturbed by its surroundings.
A beautiful, peaceful little particle.
Minding its own business.
Not worrying about relationships, mortgages, or whether it should buy an orange watch.
Lovely.
Except that this is not quite what a pure quantum state means.
A pure state does not necessarily mean a system is isolated, stationary or free from interactions.
And, importantly, a pure state does not have to remain unchanged.
For a closed quantum system, its evolution is unitary, so the state can evolve over time while remaining pure.
In fact, purity and being stationary are two completely different ideas.
A stationary state of a time-independent Hamiltonian has measurement probabilities that remain constant in time, even though its state vector acquires a phase.
A general pure state, however, can undergo a much more interesting evolution.
It can change.
And still remain pure.
I find that distinction beautiful.
Because I wonder whether we humans have confused happiness with something resembling a stationary state.
We imagine that one day we will arrive at the correct emotional configuration.
Everything will finally be in place.
We will feel good.
We will be satisfied.
And then, ideally, nothing will disturb us ever again.
But what a strange ambition.
Why should a change in our emotional state mean that something has gone wrong?
Why should sadness invalidate yesterday's joy?
Why should fear make us less capable of being at peace?
Of course, human emotions are not quantum states in this mathematical sense. I am using quantum evolution as an analogy, not proposing a physical theory of happiness.
But the distinction still makes me think.
Perhaps we have been trying to preserve the wrong thing.
Not our capacity to feel.
Not our ability to learn.
Not our curiosity.
But one particular emotional configuration that we have arbitrarily decided should last forever.
And when it inevitably changes, we call it unhappiness.
How exhausting.
We Are Not Particularly Isolated Systems
There is another complication.
Quantum systems do not always evolve as perfectly closed systems.
In reality, interactions with the environment are often important.
When a quantum system becomes entangled with its surroundings, its reduced state can lose purity, and decoherence can suppress observable interference between certain alternatives.
This doesn't mean that the entire universe has stopped evolving unitarily, or that every interaction necessarily destroys purity.
It means that the description of a subsystem can become very different once its correlations with the environment are taken into account.
And I find the idea of interaction particularly interesting when thinking about ourselves.
Because we are constantly being influenced.
By people.
By experiences.
By disappointments.
By conversations we didn't expect to have.
By a woman we meet beside a fire in the middle of the desert and never see again.
We cannot live without interacting with our surroundings.
And I am not sure why we would want to.
Imagine if I had spent that night trying to protect myself from every uncomfortable emotion.
If I had refused to talk about my problems.
If she had refused to tell me hers.
If we had both decided that sadness and uncertainty were undesirable disturbances that should be eliminated.
We would probably have spent a very boring evening staring at the fire.
And I would have lost one of the most beautiful memories of my life.
Now, I am not suggesting that emotional experiences produce quantum decoherence in some special way that explains our psychology.
They don't.
But the analogy raises a question I rather like.
Why are we so determined to remain undisturbed?
Why do we assume that a good life should be one in which nothing affects us too deeply?
I don't want to be untouched by life.
I want to experience it.
Even when it is uncomfortable.
Especially when it teaches me something.
A Little Oscillation, Please
And there is one final idea from quantum physics that I would like to bring into this rather questionable investigation of happiness.
Oscillation.
In certain quantum systems, the probabilities of different measurement outcomes can oscillate over time.
A simple example is a two-level system undergoing coherent dynamics, where the probability of finding the system in one state or another can vary periodically.
Not every quantum system oscillates, of course.
And there is no universal law saying that everything must constantly change in order to be physically meaningful.
But oscillation is a perfectly natural feature of many physical systems.
And perhaps that is what I find so beautiful about it.
Movement between different possibilities does not necessarily mean that something is malfunctioning.
Sometimes, it is simply part of the dynamics.
And I wonder why we struggle so much to accept that in ourselves.
We feel excited.
Then tired.
Then nostalgic.
Then optimistic.
Then frightened.
Sometimes all in the same afternoon.
And instead of accepting that we are complex creatures having complex experiences, we start asking ourselves whether we are happy.
As though we should be able to reduce the entire trajectory of our existence to one stable emotional measurement.
Imagine someone offered you permanent happiness.
No sadness.
No fear.
No disappointment.
No nostalgia.
No uncertainty.
Would you accept?
I wouldn't.
Not because I particularly enjoy suffering.
Believe me, I don't.
But because I cannot imagine loving someone without occasionally missing them.
Or having dreams without sometimes being frightened that they won't come true.
Or learning something important without first discovering that I was wrong.
I want to laugh.
I want to cry.
I want to become ridiculously excited about things.
I want to make mistakes.
I want to fall in love with ideas, places, people and possibilities.
And sometimes I want to sit quietly, completely confused, wondering what on earth I am doing with my life.
Preferably not every day.
But occasionally.
Because those moments are also part of me.
And perhaps the problem is not that we oscillate between different emotions.
Perhaps the problem is that we have decided that only one of them is acceptable.
So, Are You Happy?
After all these stories, a woman in the desert, several sticks hitting my body, and a rather unnecessary number of quantum particles, I still haven't managed to define happiness.
Wonderful.
But perhaps that was the problem all along.
We keep searching for happiness as though it were a final state. Something we can reach, preserve, and proudly announce to the world.
But what if we are not supposed to remain in one state?
What if the sadness, the excitement, the fear, the uncertainty, and even those rather disastrous decisions are not interruptions to our happiness, but part of what makes our existence interesting?
I don't want to be happy all the time.
I want to feel. To understand what hurts me, to have the courage to remove what no longer belongs in my life, and to continue discovering things about myself that I didn't even know were there.
And above all, I want to dream.
Not because achieving those dreams will finally make me happy, but because I find the possibility of tomorrow far too entertaining to spend today questioning whether I am happy enough.
Perhaps that is what peace means to me.
Not the absence of disturbances, but no longer treating every disturbance as something that needs to be fixed.
And perhaps that is why I always shout YES! SUPERMEGA HAPPY! even when my life is a complete mess.
Because I am not claiming to have reached some extraordinary emotional state.
I am simply happy to be participating in this rather absurd experiment called existence.
And if one day you ask me whether I am happy and I don't know what to answer, please don't worry.
Perhaps I'm just in the middle of becoming someone I haven't met yet.
And I would hate to interrupt the process just to take a measurement.