Stumbling on Happiness by David Gilbert

 Stumbling on Happiness by David Gilbert


 
This book is one of the classics of Psychology and part of my bibliotherapy. The author’s humor has been appreciated and compared with that of Bill Bryson.

It is interesting to read about our mind and the funny way it works, when it does. David Gilbert says that we are the only ones who think about the future, or at least are capable to do so. As an owner of an ocean fish tank, I was amused to read that gold fish meet each other for the first time…whenever they meet again- they don’t recognize each other- I suppose that goes for the Ocean fish too…or doesn’t it? I should look for a book on the psychology of fish.

When we imagine the future, we tend to project the present into it. SF literature in the 1950s and 60s tended to project major nuclear conflicts at the end of the future.

People love to think about California and how happy they would be there, not thinking about the traffic jams, only about the beach, the ocean.

Wealth is another misconceived concept: the wealthier the happier we tend to think. Well, it turns out to be wrong: a person who makes $ 50,000 a year in the US is indeed much happier than the one who earns $ 10,000 a year- but once someone made it into the middle class and everyday food and bills are no longer a worry, the amount of extra money makes no difference.

Daniel Gilbert says that it is funny that humans still make so much effort to obtain something – money-which from one point on doesn’t add anything to our happiness. Nature has regulated somehow the question of food eating: there is only that much you can eat, with your stomach size, but there is no limit to the amount of money that you could try hard to earn, even if “consuming” it doesn’t make a difference.

Those who win the lottery, after a short while tend to be as happy as they used to be before winning the jackpot. Even those who suffer a debilitating accident, losing a limb, tend to become as happy as they used to be. We get used with big amounts of money, fancy cars and even a disability.

Gilbert says that if Bergman stayed with Bogart at the end of Casablanca she would have been happy.

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