a professor was giving a talk about happiness. she was listing the happiest con tries of the world and the reasons behind their satisfaction. the happiest country in the world was listed as Denmark.
my first response was: "sure, it's obvious. they are wealthy, educated and healthy. and they have a socialistic country that takes care of them when they need it." but then she compared other countries with similar characteristics. Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, etc.
it turned out, the most important factor determining happiness is expectations. apparently Danish have low expectations of life. they don't expect to have huge amounts of money, extraordinary careers, big houses or luxury cars. in fact, every year they are pleasantly surprised that the state of affairs in Denmark is not completely rotten.
now, think about that for a second. i had to pause and reflect on it for a few days. this is huge. this is telling me that the lower i expect from life, the happier i am. (assuming basic levels of well being). completely counter intuitive, right? maybe.
it made me think about my relationships. does that mean the happiest relationships are the ones that the couple have the lowest expectations from each other? does that mean not having standards make you happy? if you are a beer snob like me, you get annoyed when all is available is budlight. but if you have low expectations, you can't be disappointed.
i have to say, i am conflicted by this. if in search of quality we lose happiness, do we want to pause and lower our expectations? or do we want to accept that we just can't be the happiest people because we can't have low standards. how much control do we really have in setting expectations?
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This must provoke a long discussion and maybe subject for a whole PhD project. Beeing happy without having any expectations ? Hard to imagine for me. I sometimes used the paraphrase that one is happiest, if he does not need to think about happiness. But not having any expectations, isn"t this like having no hope, seeing no promises for the future ? The frustration usually starts once the expectations are fullfilled ("Post coitum omne animal triste est"). When you have nothing left any more to expect, than sadness starts. On the other hand, if you consider the exogeneous factors you might be right. The people in east-germany were not really sad because they could not travel abroad. They were just angry, compensated this with some homour and with all sorts of attempts to find privat satisfaction. At least we did not had to worry where to go for the next vacation, how to bet my friends and colleagues with more exclusive holiday destinations and the like. Same with cars: if there are only two cheesy models available, you never need to bother how to get enough money to by a Porsche. In particular intellectual people perhaps benefit if the entire society is a bid less fixed on material wealth. But still, they have expectations, not neccessarily in terms of material wealth, but in terms of intellectual, political and artistic freedom and a minimal degree of living standard.
ReplyDeletei agree with you. not having expectations is similar to having no hope. and with no hope life seems, well, hopeless, and unhappy.
ReplyDeletebut what if you expect from yourself more than you can deliver? then you'd be unhappy to.
Hi Me, Sometimes these are expectations which the society has imposed on you. In an ideal world, one would always understand what is important for one self on the long run, not just for a quick satisfaction or to receive some applause from the audience. A lot of expectations nowadays result from the mainstream media and the industry. They want us to wear their stuff, to bleach our teeth, they make the girls believe that a nose has to be corrected, lips blown up and the hair straightened. They expect that you buy a new car every 3 years and the latest iPhone model. Does this stuff makes us really happy ? With a partnership it is more subtle, of course. One cannot simply ignore your friends or partners expectations, but they should be realistic. If your partner suddenly wants you to be one foot taler or have green instead of brown eyes, than there is something wrong.
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