Happiness has special significance to Americans. The eloquent declaration of shared values of this Republic identifies a God-given right to a self-directed pursuit of happiness and includes the goals of safety and happiness as the primary reasons America was founded.
Philosophically minded people enjoy discussing “What is happiness?” The purpose here is not to define happiness; it’s to identify the psychological process through which some people attain a high, consistent level of happiness. Identifying very happy people (VHP) parallels the quip about porn: happiness is hard to define, but you know lived happiness when you see it. We know that VHP not only transmit positive energy, but also evoke positive energy in others. VHP integrate polarities of optimistic vitality and poised equanimity, dynamic tolerance, and moral clarity. They are often in society’s vanguard yet are not rebellious against the status quo. They radiate flexibility and open-mindedness alongside strong convictions and universalist identification combined with active loyalty to their own connections. They are non-aggressive with the courage to effect change.
What is the operating dynamic that enables some people to be extremely happy through adversity and engender happiness in others? What is the psychology of VHP beyond other people who are moderately happy, and far beyond people who are consistently unhappy?
VHP evidence superior valuation competence, which enables the ongoing “truing” of their lives. They swiftly, consistently, almost automatically recognize the most important, relevant value to be enacted in every choice they make, and they select the alternative choices that actualize true values in the experiential outcome of decisions.
A great gift within the progression of consciousness from animal to human form is that human beings possess conscious access to unchanging, divine truth functionalized as true values and can use valuation to rise above instinct in directing behavior.
The true and rightful values that enable happiness are facets of the gem of unchanging truth. Each shining value adds to the brilliance of the others and to the gem of truth itself. Here’s a sample of 25 facets of truth, love, purity, and beauty in alphabetical order: authenticity, benevolence, courage, dignity, equanimity, forgiveness, generosity, humility, integrity, joyfulness, kindness, loyalty, mercy, optimism, patience, rationality, sincerity, tolerance, usefulness, wisdom, zest. Happiness springs from the capacity to express such values through life choices.
Modern life requires us to make two kinds of choices: structural and functional. The structural choices define the external circumstances of life, such as marriage, employment, location. Functional choices are the small, habitual choices we make every day. Foremost regarding valuation competence and life truing among the daily functional choices are the words we speak. Also, what we consume, what we do, and whom we associate with are important daily functional choices. We tend to think more about the big, structural choices, but generally the daily functional choices make the tone of life happy or unhappy.
VHP enjoy superior skill in making both structural and functional choices based upon irreducible values of unchanging truth. This enables the psychological response pattern called truing, which integrates life into congruence with right valuation, rendering happiness, honesty, integrity, and contentment under changing circumstances.
Psychologists use two basic methodologies to study psychological phenomena: the ideographic is in-depth, non-statistical study of individuals, and the nomothetic is statistical comparison among groups. These notions about superior valuation competence and truing capacity as the primary psychodynamic of happiness are based on an ideographic study of two very happy people I have known well. The first is Brandeis University professor Morrie Schwartz, who became a global icon of fundamental happiness shortly before his death in 1995. The second VHP I studied closely was Leona E. Tyler, a president of the American Psychological Association and one of the first female deans of the graduate school of a major public university. Though these two came from different cultural, religious, and social backgrounds, the music of life for VHP strikes similar chords.
The sociology department at Brandeis in the early 1970s cannot be described as a stronghold of scientific rigor. (There was a story about a student who had dropped a sociology course but still got a B. He went to the professor to ask how that happened. The prof assumed he was complaining and said, “You never came to class, you didn’t write the paper, and you didn’t take the final. I couldn’t give you an A.”)
I remember many hours in encounter groups lead by Morrie. Without personal or political agenda, or textbook methodology, he created a safe and joyful environment for young people to open their hearts. After each group, we would circle together and sing “Hey, Jude.”
Mainly, I got to study Morrie through the time I spent with his family. I lived in his home for some weeks one summer, and I guess I was a kind of au pair with the family on Cape Cod. I just felt like a valued friend. I remember I broke something in his home, and he said, “That always happens” — a tad absurd, but comforting.
VHP are not moody, mushy, or pushovers. I applied to be a houseparent at a psychiatric halfway house. They didn’t hire me. They said I didn’t talk enough, which was true because I was absorbed in studying the behaviors. I went boo-hooing to Morrie: “They rejected me.” Morrie gently said, “You need to toughen up.”
In his last days, Morrie articulated the universalist experience of all VHP: “I’m not a wave; I’m part of all humanity.” Mitch Albom summarized Morrie’s extreme happiness in the final Nightline episode: Morrie was happy “because he was concerned with things that were important to him.” Happiness for each of us amounts to recognizing and actualizing what is important.
Leona Tyler was born in 1906 and raised in an economically struggling family in the Iron Range of Minnesota. At 16, without a degree, she became the town’s one-room schoolhouse teacher, in part due to her ability to teach “backward” children to read. Doing that job for many years formed the basis of her pioneering interest in the theory of individual differences and possibility. VHP tend not to be highly political and do not waste energy on grievance. After Leona received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, she was rejected from teaching positions explicitly because she was a woman. She acknowledged that history without a trace of resentment. In twenty years of close association, I never heard her criticize another person one single time. She referred to the wealth she had earned as “little numbers on the page” and gave generously, with complete detachment.
Leona’s superior valuation competency trued her life unto its last minutes. We brought her back from death once with a blood transfusion. When she regained consciousness, she asked us not to do that again, with forgiveness in her voice. As she was dying, she waited for the nurse to leave before pulling out the oxygen tube, and her last act was a prayer for our sakes. Like Morrie, her writings are fragranced with belongingness to one universal human family.
Modern, secular nations sustain collective happiness by superior valuation competence through the rule of just law. Through the years, the just application of statutes upholds the values that inspired the body of law and unifies the citizenry. Despite bitter trials, America has always emerged as a happy nation because the U.S. Constitution has been such robust law in providing right and just valuation of the central ideals.
America is swiftly becoming a very unhappy nation because the rule of law under the Constitution is being destroyed. Now, with massive lawbreaking at the border and cases like the unending political persecution of patriotic J6 protesters and the unconstitutional persecution of a former president and current leading candidate, the most important values of America are being rejected, and a regression to animalistic fear is in control of the government. Right and true valuation as guided by the Constitution seems to be dying.
Yet, when I feel hopeless about the future, I picture Morrie making funny clicking noises and dancing like a gawky teenager, and especially I hear Leona calmly saying there are multiple possibilities for good in every moment.
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