What do whales have to do with happiness?

We bustle together on the headland, an excited crowd smiling and pointing to the sea below. Hearing the occasional gasp and cheer, others are drawn to our vantage point and quickly become mesmerised too. We’re watching whales. Three humpbacks the size of train carriages are travelling south on a perfectly clear spring day, and the humans are overjoyed. As if showing off, the huge mammals roll languidly through the water, sending up geysers, breeching, and giving a lazy wave of their tails before submerging once more.
This is a moment of collective ‘happiness’. Cheerfulness, exhilaration, festiveness, gleefulness, good-naturedness and sunniness are some of the other words for it. They’re words that on their own can lift the spirits. (Try saying them out loud.)
Here we’re experiencing a moment of respite from the concerns of the past and worries about the future. Pure wonder and enjoyment – if only we could bottle it.
Happiness comes in different forms. Moments of it can be found in the simplest of pleasures, like whale-watching, or something more profound. Our ability to notice and appreciate these moments enriches our lives. Consider the feel of a toddler’s delicate hand as you hold it crossing the street; a surprise kiss on the neck from your lover; rain falling after years of drought; the end of a war at last. While these things are undoubtedly wonderful, the type of happiness they cause is ephemeral, sure to pass, and tomorrow new challenges will come our way. Being able to accept the reality that change and difficulties are part of life’s package means moving a step closer to finding the key.
‘Happiness’ can seem a superficial goal at times, and now that an industry has built up around the concept, it’s easy to see it as yet another commodity. Perhaps ‘contentment’ or ‘inner peace’ might be better words to use; they have a lasting quality.
The good-natured Buddhist monk and scientist, Frenchman Matthieu Ricard, has been called the happiest man in the world because tests conducted on his brain show he has an outstanding ability to remain positive for long periods under conditions that would ordinarily be stressful. For Matthieu, happiness is “above all, a love of life”, he says, and a matter of perspective. His level of inner peace might seem beyond the reach of most of us, but it’s hard not to be inspired by him to at least do what we can.
“Anyone who enjoys inner peace is no more broken by failure than he is inflated by success,” he says. But, sorry, there are no shortcuts.
“We must cultivate the states of mind that favour authentic happiness and eliminate afflictive thoughts and emotions that undermine it. This requires determination and perseverance.” Damn. For most mere mortals this usually means a fair investment in therapy of some kind. People don’t just get there by themselves.
If you’re not happy, here are three words to take to heart: Do something different.
Unfortunately, human nature means it can often take a crisis for people to want to change. A relationship breakdown, a major health scare, the death of a loved one can all cause us to reassess what’s important and decide to jettison what’s not working. If you manage to steer your life in a more positive direction as a result, you can be thankful for the wake-up call, as painful as it might have been.
Neuroscientists, psychologists and Buddhist scholars have measured happiness in different ways in recent decades to discover its causes. As well as pointing to the benefits of meditation, their research shows people are happiest when they are grateful for the good things in their lives, are altruistic, optimistic about the future, and enjoy other people’s company. These are all things within each individual’s power to obtain and they have nothing to do with being rich, thin or beautiful.
Poverty isn’t good for either your health or happiness, but once you have an average income you will not be happier by having more, so the studies say. The quest for more is unending, of course, which is why it fails to produce greater happiness.
“What about children?” you might ask. “Surely they’re a source of happiness for people?” Yes, they’re a source of happiness, but life actually gets harder once the first child arrives and people’s happiness levels drop.
Psychologist Daniel Gilbert caused some controversy by saying that having children doesn’t make people happier but we need to believe it does in order to perpetuate our race. His research found people experienced just a bit more pleasure playing with their children than doing the housework and not as much pleasure as talking with friends, eating or (how embarrassing) watching TV. Call me weird – I would much rather watch the whales.
So now we know, thanks to scientific research, what the world’s major religions have been telling us for ages about how to behave, we can attempt to do what the ancient philosopher Epicurus recommended and “practise the things which produce happiness, since if that is present we have everything and if it is absent we do everything in order to have it”. Go for it!