I was musing yesterday on the points made in Stumbling On Happiness. One thing that particularly struck me was — well, I have to encapsulate a bit of background here.
It turns out that one of the most accurate ways to predict how we will feel about something is to ask people doing that thing how they feel about it. “D’Artagnan,” we should say, “how do you like being a musketeer?” We are no good at remembering how we felt or predicting how we will feel, but we are good at identifying how much we enjoy something at the time. And, when people are forced by experimental design to predict their own reactions based on the reported reactions of a randomly-chosen person who is actually doing the thing, they are far more accurate than when they make a guess based on information allowing them to imagine their own reactions.
Now here’s the thing I thought interesting: even when people are acquainted with research demonstrating this, they still choose the less-accurate method of imagining their own reactions. And that is because we are all convinced that we are so special and unusual that we cannot go by others’ reactions to things. We, we think, are different.
And we aren’t.
Gilbert proposes that the reason we think we are different and special is that our experience of our own thoughts and feelings has a richness which our experience of other people’s thoughts and feelings doesn’t have. What with our not having any first-hand experience of other people’s thoughts and feelings.
A friend’s son is experiencing deep misery during graduate school. All of us who have been to graduate school can say, “Well, of course. Everyone experiences misery during graduate school. It will go away when you finish graduate school. Relax” But to him it is a special and unique experience, a particularly deep misery, nearly intolerable. Being told that it is a normal feeling and part of the human condition doesn’t help.
And in fact, being told that one’s teen angst, early marital difficulties, loneliness when out on one’s own for the first time, dissatisfaction with one’s first job, midlife crisis, or irritation at aging is perfectly normal and everyone feels that way is not comforting.
Last night at choir practice we sang a song which sounded to me like Christmas on the Pirate Ship. You can hear it by clicking on “Followers of the Lamb” on this page. However, the words are new and not hanging around on line anywhere, so it cannot be the song of the day in spite of its very catchy and piratical tune.
Instead, I offer you a really pretty and easy tune. #2 daughter and I will be singing “Beautiful Star of Bethlehem” at the Christmas Eve service. This nice gospel song by South Carolinian Adger Pace has been recorded by Emmylou Harris, Patty Loveless, Chanticleer, the Stanley Brothers, and a bunch of other folks since Pace wrote it in 1940. We will most likely be doing it as an a capella duet, but it sounds great in six parts with a fiddle and other bluegrass instruments, and please invite me if you plan to do it that way in your parlor.
thanks for the link to choral music…
I have to sympathize with the grad school guy. I certainly wouldn’t have believed that my fellow grad students were having the horrific time I was having. They didn’t look like they were. But then, they may not have known what I was going through either. I never told them that I considered dropping out quite a bit and then that I’d had an emotionally abusive boyfriend (who was also in the program, why I didn’t tend to talk about it!). And, actually, I haven’t heard that many folks say that grad school was horrid. Of course, my mention of the abusive boyfriend might have trumped their stories so they don’t bother saying anything? (about 2 years with him, a year getting over it all including losing 20 pounds in 2 months due to stress, then a wonderful year when I was with my now-husband. What a change from college–the best four years of my life followed by the worst.) –AnnMarie
uh, I don’t know about you, but my miseries are totally worse than anyone else’s ever in the history of mankind. Ever. Full stop.
That’s interesting, though. I mean, I know that my experiences aren’t new or anything, but I do feel that no one could know the extent of the badness inherent in the situation.
Like my persistent singleness. The drain on my time that knows no bounds. My first job out of college and the attempt to work on my carreer
When we are young adults I don’t think we are really programmed to consider anyone but ourselves. We are special and unique and our problems are worse than everyone elses. If you think about it it makes sense. As kids the centre of our world is our relationship with our parents. We quite literally depend upon them to keep us alive. Once adolescence sets in we are becoming physically and emotionally more able to take care of ourselves. We need to become completely self-centred in order to become fully independent of our parents. Once that independence occurs we have the chance to develop our confidence in ourselves and our ability to run our own lives.We can stay self-centred until we find ourselves responsible for the lives of our children at which point the parent-child relationship again becomes the centre of our lives, only this time we are at the other end of the telescope. I have no problem with the self-centredness of young adulthood. It is in fact the last bastion of innocence, thinking the world revolves around us and our concerns. It’s only when I see the same self-centredness in fully mature adults who are supposed to be bringing up the next generation that I get really angry. Fortunately, I know very few adults like that, and none at all among those whom I consider to be friends.