{"id":33048,"date":"2019-08-23T03:57:32","date_gmt":"2019-08-23T10:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=33048"},"modified":"2019-08-22T15:52:28","modified_gmt":"2019-08-22T22:52:28","slug":"how-can-we-be-happy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2019\/08\/23\/how-can-we-be-happy\/","title":{"rendered":"How can we be happy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Left to right are Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University Vancouver president Stav Adler, CFHU Vancouver executive director Dina Wachtel and Hebrew U\u2019s Prof. Yoram Yovell. (photo from CFHU Vancouver)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The happiest time in the average person\u2019s life is when the last grown child leaves home and the dog dies. That was the tip of the iceberg in happiness advice from one of world\u2019s foremost experts and researchers on the subject.<\/p>\n

Prof. Yoram Yovell, a psychiatrist, brain researcher, psychoanalyst, author and media phenomenon in Israel, spoke to an overflow crowd at Beth Israel Synagogue July 25. An associate professor in the division of clinical neuroscience, Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Yovell is author of two bestsellers: Brainstorm<\/em> and What is Love?<\/em> He hosted the award-winning primetime TV show Sihat Nefesh<\/em> (Heart-to-heart Talk)<\/em> for 10 years. His visit was presented by Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and made possible by the Dr. Robert Rogow and Dr. Sally Rogow Memorial Endowment Fund in Support of Academic Lectures.<\/p>\n

Yovell speculated that the audience was so large because of a sad fact about Vancouver.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow I understand why all of you are here,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t know this before I came here \u2013 you are considered to be the unhappiest city in Canada.\u201d<\/p>\n

He supposes this status might have to do with the combination of rainy days and the proportion of new Canadians, because \u201cimmigrants, for very important reasons, happen to be less happy than people who live in the same place where they were born,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But advancing happiness (or ameliorating unhappiness) requires us to define it, he said. He asked the audience to raise their hands if they were happy \u2013 most did \u2013 but then he demanded to know how they knew they were happy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat question sounds silly,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause happiness is a subjective mental state. It\u2019s something that I feel inside.\u2026 You probably did with yourself something that you would have done had I asked you, are you hungry or not hungry? Are you hot or cold? Are you tired or awake? In all the circumstances, people look inside and try to get a certain feeling and then that\u2019s what they report. By doing so, we are treating happiness as if it\u2019s something we feel. I\u2019m not saying it\u2019s bad that happiness is something we feel, but I think we have lots to gain by really questioning whether happiness is something that we feel or something that we do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aristotle, who wrote a lot about happiness, differentiated hedonia<\/em>, pleasure, from eudaimonia<\/em>, a much more complex concept that has more to do with achieving one\u2019s potential in every aspect of our lives.<\/p>\n

Instead of asking, \u201cAre you happy?\u201d Aristotle would ask, \u201cAre you the best doctor you can be, the best husband, the best parent?\u201d<\/p>\n

Yovell said, \u201cAnd, if the answer is yes, or almost yes, to most of those questions, then, for Aristotle, I\u2019m eudaimonia and he doesn\u2019t care how I feel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tal Ben Shahar, an Israeli who wrote the book Happier<\/em> about 2,400 years after Aristotle\u2019s ponderings on happiness, developed a simple equation: happiness equals pleasure plus meaning. This dictum is, Yovell said, the only thing that every school of philosophy and every religion agrees on. Pleasure does not equal happiness. Meaning is the additional ingredient that turns fleeting pleasure into lasting happiness.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe contribution of pleasure to happiness is there, but it\u2019s small,\u201d said Yovell. \u201cAnd what\u2019s even more important is it does not last, whereas the contribution of meaning to our happiness is huge and it\u2019s stable. That makes an enormous difference to how we should conduct our lives if we want to be happier.\u201d<\/p>\n

One example he discussed was a study showing that most parents say, in retrospect, that child-rearing is the thing that made them happiest. But ask them when they\u2019re changing diapers, doing laundry or settling squabbles, and they\u2019ll tell you their happiness level is in the basement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t really matter what you felt in the meantime,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat matters is what is kept in your memories. We live in our memories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having children, for most people, is the most meaningful thing they\u2019ve ever done, said Yovell.<\/p>\n

\u201cPleasure is good. Have a good dinner, have a vacation abroad, upgrade your car model \u2013 all these things are going to make you happier. But not to a great degree and not for very long,\u201d he said. \u201cThe things that are going to make us happy long-term are the things that give our lives meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, the road to happiness can be arduous.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you take a regular couple and ask, \u2018When are these two people going to be at the top of their marital happiness?\u2019 the answer is a short time after they get married and, with every child they have, their level of happiness decreases. And when their first child hits adolescence \u2026\u201d at this point his words were drowned out by the laughter and applause of the audience. \u201cYou know what I\u2019m talking about, right?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut there is light at the end of the tunnel,\u201d he continued. \u201cFor those of us who manage to bypass this \u2018Death Valley,\u2019 there is going to come a time in our marital life where our happiness level [improves]. The vast majority of you are going to get happier \u2026 the older you become, the happier you\u2019re going to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

A study of 340,000 American men and women looked at the correlation between their well-being and their age.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt 18, they\u2019re pretty happy \u2013 before they\u2019ve realized what\u2019s going to happen,\u201d said Yovell. \u201cSoon, they go off to college and there goes their happiness and they keep going down and down and down and it gets worse and worse and then they hit rock bottom here, in the 40s and 50s,\u201d he said, pointing at a slide on the projection screen. \u201cBut, it gets better as they get older, sicker, less attractive, closer to death \u2013 and happier.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yovell\u2019s academic work has often focused on reducing extreme unhappiness so that, for example, suicidal people are improved enough to be brought back from that brink.<\/p>\n

He cited Sigmund Freud, a founding board member of Hebrew University, noting that \u201cmany things that Freud hypothesized were proven wrong, but many were proven right.\u201d One example, he said, was Freud\u2019s observation in his first book that \u201cMuch will be gained if we succeed in transforming hysterical misery into common unhappiness.\u201d<\/p>\n

The science of happiness has advanced dramatically in just the past two decades, Yovell said. We now know that the parts of the brain that register physical pain overlap with those that register emotional pain.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is something that 20 years ago we knew absolutely nothing about and now we do. In the last two decades, we\u2019ve gradually learned that it is true that mental suffering is encoded in our brains using the same neural pathways, the same neurotransmitters that also mediate the extremes of physical pain.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you ask a friend about the most painful thing they\u2019ve experienced in their life, they are unlikely to tell you about a ski accident or an operation, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re going to tell you about the loss of a first-degree relative. They\u2019re going to tell you of how they felt when a father, a mother, a sibling, a spouse or, God forbid, a child has died and has left them bereaved,\u201d said Yovell. \u201cThat, for most of us, is going to be the most painful thing in our life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly new research indicates that emotional pain is something we can quantify, that it is more than subjective. With this knowledge, Yovell said, the follow-up question is: \u201cCan we make it better and, if so, how?\u201d<\/p>\n

First, it is important to understand what we can control and what we cannot.<\/p>\n

In 2014, a study looked at the relationship between happiness and genetics and concluded, the professor said, \u201cthat our genetics do influence our happiness but they are responsible for about 32% of our happiness, which means that 68% of our happiness \u2013 more than two-thirds of how happy or unhappy we\u2019re going to be \u2013 has something to do with us. Part of it is the circumstance into which you were born, but the rest is how we conduct our lives \u2013 both our real lives out in the world and our inner world, our mental lives. This is what we have to work with and that ain\u2019t bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yovell described a study of university students, in which a control group was given a placebo and another group regular-strength Tylenol and participants were then asked to journal about how they felt with their ongoing lives on campus.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose who got Tylenol instead of placebo actually experienced those mental pains to a lesser degree,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s nice, but that ain\u2019t going to do the job when things get more difficult when someone, God forbid, loses a spouse or when someone sinks into a big depression. Tylenol will not be the answer. But what about opioids? What about narcotics? What about those drugs that mitigate the effects of endorphins. Do they make mental suffering better? And, if so, at what price?\u201d<\/p>\n

Opioids were used in the treatment of depression for at least 100 years, he said, between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries.<\/p>\n

\u201cDrugs like morphine and codeine were the first drugs of choice in the treatment of mental depression and they actually worked,\u201d he said. But the problems were threefold. These drugs induce tolerance, meaning a patient has to increase the dose in order to achieve the same effect. Narcotics or opioids also cause addiction and that\u2019s a huge problem. And they are easy to overdose on.<\/p>\n

Recently, scientists have begun investigating the use of the opioid buprenorphine.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s less addictive and it\u2019s much less dangerous in overdose because, if you give it in high doses, it actually blocks its own effect, so it\u2019s very, very hard to overdose on,\u201d Yovell said. \u201cEven though it\u2019s 40 times more potent than morphine, it\u2019s actually a lot less dangerous to overdose and also less addictive.\u2026 We took people in Israel who are not only incredibly depressed but also suicidal. In addition to existing treatments for their depression and suicidality, the experiment added buprenorphine to their regimen.\u2026 Those who received the active drug, unbeknownst to them and to us as well, continued to improve. So there is hope, which is very nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

A drug-free way to marginally increase one\u2019s happiness, he said, is simple goodness, generosity and philanthropy. Making others happy makes us happy, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople who contribute their time and money, who volunteer, will not only be happier, they will live longer,\u201d he said. He then directed audience members to donation forms on their tables and asked them to consider contributing to scholarships for graduate students who are working with him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI leave it up to you,\u201d he said, \u201cwhether you want to save your lives.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Left to right are Canadian Friends of the Hebrew University Vancouver president Stav Adler, CFHU Vancouver executive director Dina Wachtel and Hebrew U\u2019s Prof. Yoram Yovell. (photo from CFHU Vancouver) The happiest time in the average person\u2019s life is when the last grown child leaves home and the dog dies. That was the tip of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[63,4007,1834,2225,9143],"class_list":["post-33048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-cfhu","tag-happiness","tag-hebrew-university","tag-science","tag-yoram-yovell"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}