The third in our series of podcasts on famous sayings we think are true but are not: “All I want is for my children to be happy.”

Episode Notes

The first reason this saying is wrong is that as it turns out that being happy is less like something you can achieve and more like something you already have by virtue of your innate personality. Wishing that your children should be happy is sort of like wishing that they be tall or beautiful or good in math. They either are or they aren’t and sadly there is not much you or they can do about it. Psychologists and social scientists who have researched this topic of human happiness are univocal in their conclusions that happiness is much more like an attribute than an acquisition. 

We know this to be true by seeing two children from the same loving family with radically different happiness set points. Environment matters but not that much. The psychologist and researcher Alex Michalos succinctly put it, “When it comes to subjective well-being, you don't get a big bang out of the real world.” 

The amazing discovery from those who investigate happiness is that the things we think matter most in making us happy actually matter least, and the things we think matter least actually matter most: Beautiful people are not happier than not-so-beautiful people. Young people are not happier than old people. Smart people are not happier than intellectually challenged people. Educated people are not happier than uneducated people. 

So if the things we think will make us happy really don’t, what does? It turns out that simple things, prosaic things make us happy. Bread makes us happy. I tell a story about how Bill Paley who ran CBS began every dinner by slowly caressing and eating a roll. He did it because he believed that if he could be thankful for bread, he could more easily remember to be thankful for all his many other blessings of wealth.

A good sense of humor makes us happy. Friends obviously make us happy. Volunteering makes us happy, and community makes us happy. There is, of course the cynics who like Spike Mulligan taught in his Las Vegas lounge act, “Money can't buy you happiness, but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery.” Henny Youngman said, “What's the use of happiness? It can't buy you money.”

I tell the story of an American investment banker trying to convince a South American fisherman that he should go public as an example of the joy of a simple life. 

The rabbis teach, “Who is rich? The one who is happy with his lot.” 

I tell the story of an executive vice president of IBM whom I heard speak at his retirement luncheon and there, in front of all the young, eager, and ambitious gaggle of vice presidents he said this, “I know that every one of you in this room want my job and I am going to tell you how you can get it. When my daughter was married I walked her down the aisle. At that moment of my daughter’s life I realized that I did not know her favorite color, or the last book she read, or the name of her best friend. I realized that I knew nothing about my daughter. That is the price I paid to get the things I thought would make me happy. So, if you are willing to pay that price, you can have my damn job.” 

The rabbis teach, “Who is rich? The one who is happy with his lot.” That is the truth. 

Tommy got Mother Teresa’s business card. On it there was no phone number and no address. It just had her name and these words, “Happiness is the natural fruit of duty.”