Happier, Tal Ben-Shahar, Ph.D.

 

Based upon the most popular class at Harvard University, Tal Ben-Shahar’s Happier is an examination of human happiness; it attempts to define what we mean when we use the word “happiness” and it tries to apply this feeling in our personal and professional lives.  Can we make ourselves happier?  What do we need to do?

 

The author of this book has a number of theories he has found in his studies of happiness.  One is that work is integral to happiness; as he puts it, “to be happy we need to work” (98).  But not just any work.  Meaningful work.  Work that has personal meaning.  And to find what this means, an individual has to know what is personally meaningful.

 

Ben-Shahar has done his homework. He cites many studies and statistics regarding human happiness—and his findings, ironically, made me quite sad! For example, he claims that the “rates of depression are ten times higher today than they were in the 1960s, and the average age for the onset of depression is fourteen and a half compared to twenty-nine and a half in 1960” (ix).   Sad stuff!                          

 

Why?  Why are so many people currently depressed?  Some of Ben-Shahar’s theories are a bit surprising.  For example, he claims that the happiness we feel when helping others is more long-lasting than the happiness we feel when doing something for ourselves, something we want to do.  For this reason, some of the exercises in the book focus on this point, on the reader doing something for someone else, like “giving flowers to a loved one, reading to your child, or donating to a cause you believe in” (128).  Afterward, he advises readers to “experience the deep happiness that can come with each act of generosity” (128).

 

Ben-Shahar also feels that difficulties are good for people, as he states, “struggles and hardships and challenges” are, in his view, not just important but necessary (89).  He thinks that some people have had their lives handed to them, that they haven’t had to struggle enough; he writes, “Life, for many young people, has quite literally been too easy” (89).  Since these people have not had to work for the positive things in their lives (or toward any life goals), they are unhappy.  They are depressed.

 

Depression is clearly an important issue today—and the theories in this book have really made me think…. J