The Happiness Curve
A short while ago my friend Pat found a speech I’d done for him when we graduated high school. He sent me a picture of the speech, sending love, and captioned it ‘simpler times’.
Perhaps life was simpler when we were at high school. Now, as adults, we have more responsibilities and are charged with confronting the full complexity of the world. Do any of us reach the heights we expect to hit when we leave high school?
Do any of us anticipate the bumps and disappointments on the road?
In the West, we celebrate our youth and are told to make the most of it – after all, it’s all downhill from there.
Note – two episodes of the With Joe Wehbe Podcast are available on the Happiness Curve if you prefer video, audio or if you want to further consolidate these ideas after reading.
Here are the Youtube Videos: Episode #027 The Happiness Curve Part One and Episode #028 The Happiness Curve Part Two
The Audio only is available here or wherever you get your podcasts! Thanks and enjoy the piece!
How does happiness change over time?
How do you think average level of happiness and wellbeing changes over a lifetime? If you had to graph it, what would that look like? Does it start high or low, then move up or down?
Take a moment now to do this very exercise. Draw this graph on paper or in your mind. What is our level of happiness in childhood, compared to our teenage years, and how does that change when we go into adulthood, midlife, and then old age?
What is the lowest point on the graph? What is the highest?
We expect a slide
In general, when people are asked to do this exercise, they draw something that resembles a slide. It starts high, as an infant in childhood, and then it’s all downhill from there. As we go down the slide we expect to become anxious and depressed as we race towards the bitter end.
We expect a slide, but the reality is a half-pipe.
Most people are wrong. Most people are dumbfounded by the truth that, average self-reported happiness when graphed tends to resemble something that looks much more like a half-pipe.
It is U-Shaped, and this finding is quite robust across cultures. The lowest point on average is in midlife at which point self-reported happiness appears to boomerang and keep improving therafter. This finding is well documented in Jonathan Rauch’s book, The Happiness Curve: Why Life Gets Better After Midlife.
But what if something terrible happens to you when you’re twenty-five?
To be clear, this finding relates to the impact of time on happiness, controlling for other factors. If you had a debilitating illness or suffered a loss at an early part of life then yes, that will bring down your self-reported happiness.
Another way of thinking of this is that it takes me around fifteen minutes to drive to the Sydney Harbour Bridge from my house, controlling for traffic and traffic lights. Of course, there has never, not once, been a clear road as I’ve driven to the Harbour Bridge, nor an endless run of green lights.
None of us goes through life without events impacting us and fluctuating our lifegraph. But what this finding refers to is the independent relationship between time and self-reported happiness. Think of life without traffic or traffic-lights – in general, the U-Shape is the trend.
This trend is universal
This trend does change subtly from culture to culture, but the general U-shaped distribution holds true.
It is also independent of money
Remember, this finding is also independent of levels of financial wealth and material well-being.
Midlife is the low-point.
It so turns out that midlife is the typical low point. We have very much stigmatised the idea of the ‘midlife crisis’. This is to our detriment.
It is something we feel we are trying to avoid – yet so many people fall vulnerable to the stereotype – in actual fact, we would be best served acknowledging this stage as a re-calibration. If anything, we should try to accelerate midlife crisis to mid-early life.
What happens in middle-age?
Midlife is a convergence of a range of forces. In general, people are caring for their children in addition to elderly, ageing parents with declining health. This is also a time when a typical career and set of achievements will reach some form of maturity.
But still, these events do not fully explain the Happiness Curve. There is not a single, proven explanation for this trend.
But there is a very good working theory.
You might ask yourself first – why does happiness follow a U-shaped trajectory?
How is it that people get happier in old age, when they are growing feeble and waiting to die? When they have no careers ahead of them or limitless time to look forward to?
Think and reflect on your theory, and when you’re ready, take a look at the next article in this series for the ‘good working theory’ – something I learned which revolutionised my life and my thinking.
A hint
I relayed to you at the start a simple story involving my friend Pat. It is easy to fall into nostalgia and longing for the past – but what is more curious and unexpected is what lies in the future. Of course none of us expects to find the bumps on the paths we take out of youth. In truth, none of us expect much of what comes to happen at all.
Would this piece ‘open a door’ for someone you know? Share it with them, after all, the best way to open a thousand doors for you is to open doors for others.
Note – two episodes of the With Joe Wehbe Podcast are available on the Happiness Curve if you prefer video, audio or if you want to further consolidate these ideas after reading.
Here are the Youtube Videos: Episode #027 The Happiness Curve Part One and Episode #028 The Happiness Curve Part Two
The Audio only is available here or wherever you get your podcasts! Thanks and enjoy the piece!
