"We think we hate work, but actually we don't. Work extends life. On top of that, it makes us happy. A lazy society is weeded out; a lazy person dies young. Pushed on by competition, our lives improve, and with that our chances to achieve happiness grow in proportion." (p. 164)
What kind of life do we have to live to be truly happy? What is the path to happiness in our busy modern society? To that question, some experts warn, "Competition is a cancer that devours our souls and our happiness." They also say, "The more we have, the more we want," and advise us to "break out of a life that just spins in a squirrel cage."
Author Todd Buchholz calls these people "slick-tongued happiness evangelists" or "Edenists," and pushes back against their claims. He says, "The taut, edge-of-the-seat, all-in kind of competition is precisely what makes us happy."
As a young man, the author worked on Manhattan for a high salary, but felt it was all rather dry and empty, so he switched to a role as an economic adviser in the White House. His paycheck dropped sharply and he had to work through the weekends, but he got mental satisfaction. That's when he realized happiness is not proportional to paycheck, but to how much you are recognized and how proud you can feel of yourself. Meanwhile, he saw that the world was awash in books insisting the way to find happiness is to step away from work and stress. It worried him that society was undervaluing the happiness he had felt in his busy White House days, and looking at job seekers as if they were mindlessly about to jump into a squirrel cage. That's why Buchholz wrote this book.
Happiness, the author argues, does not simply arrive by stepping back, chanting dharanis, and doing deep breathing. Nor does heading out to Walden Pond like Henry David Thoreau make you happy by itself. Rather than chasing a monastery-like Shangri-La (utopia), he says, we can live a better life by engaging with the world.
Buchholz asks why wealthy people and those who run their own businesses work the longest hours. His answer: because they have a sense of self-control and power. They would rather feel proud of themselves than be surrounded by waiters fawning over them at a beach club. In the end, happiness depends far more on personal control than on income. Working hard to succeed is what makes people happy.
"We think we hate work, but actually we don't. Work extends life. On top of that, it makes us happy. A lazy society is weeded out; a lazy person dies young. Pushed on by competition, our lives improve, and with that our chances to achieve happiness grow in proportion." (p. 164)
Buchholz introduces an excerpt from tennis star Andre Agassi's memoir. Agassi confessed that he had actually hated tennis. Because tennis is the loneliest sport. The author argues that we have not been made unhappy by excessive competition and too much work. Competition does not corner us into isolation, he argues, but is in fact a way to revive community spirit and friendship. Accept the competitive self within us, and embrace those who compete alongside us as friends, and that's how we navigate the hard labor of life.
"Even if historians, theologians, and botanists got together, rafted across the Tigris, hacked through the Babylonian jungle with a big blade, and found the real Eden, they wouldn't find supreme peace there.
Grapevines would be growing there. We would have to prune them. People would disagree about which part to cut. Or about where to plant the new fig tree. Or about how to handle the evil serpent. Unnoticed, human society would remake itself there again. A human society full of tears, shouting, and competition. Of course, along with enough happiness to fuel the hope of tomorrow." (p. 344)
A book that makes you think about what competition and challenge really mean to us. The author's tasty prose is a bonus.
