HAPPINESS, RELATIONSHIPS AND THE LOCKDOWN

By His Grace and Blessings I write…

It will always be my endeavour to bring to my readers the things which seem to me in their best interest. Of course I can’t say that it will not involve my own subjectivity to some extent and up to that level of subjectivity, I may commit some error of judgment in selection of the topics for my blogs. However, I will try with best of the intentions to give quality food for thought and would always be open to constructive criticism in this regard. My last 2 blogs have been about psychedelics and as I have promised there are many more to come. However, in today’s blog (which is in 3 parts) I wish to take a little deviation from my scheduled articles on psychedelics. Why am I doing so will become more clear to the esteemed readers of my blog once they read it. I seek your cooperation in this regard and hope you will find it very interesting. My intention is to add a lot of happiness and humor to an otherwise gloomy atmosphere created by this perennial fear of the novel virus and prolonged lockdown. This blog of mine will give you some practical insights into various aspects of happiness and also how we may conduct ourselves in these few last days of lockdown so that we have a minimal bad memories of it in the future.

This article on Happiness will borrow a lot from fields of behavioural and welfare economics and from  psychology , sociology and other streams of art/science. I will also take cue from the works of great Noble Laureates in the fields of Medicine, Neurosciences and Economics ( behavioural and welfare both). The experiences of some of Buddhist and Hindu monks of the yesteryears and of today will also form part of the blog .I will take help from the field of scientific experimentation on the human brain and from practical insights gained on account of these experiments on human happiness. Last but not the least will be my effort to prove it to my esteemed readers that meditation is the single most powerful antidote to all unhappiness and misery in the world and we must start practicing it without any further delay. In my opinion there is no substitute for meditation in our lives and it can do wonders to human mind and brain which not even psychedelics can do . So let’s  start …

Happiness is an issue that has preoccupied our minds for last 15/20 years in particular. There is a plethora of literature on this subject during last 15 years . The World Happiness Report, 2019 has ranked India at 144 in the list of 156 countries that were surveyed. There has been a constant deterioration in Indian rankings since last few years. Though one may scoff off and deny theses reports citing some issues with the way the report gets prepared or raising  the  bogey of pseudo nationalism, the data/evidence speaks for itself. Consider the fact that India is called the suicide capital of the world. India has highest number of suicides between age groups of 29-45 and we have the highest number of married women committing suicides. India has a much larger percentage of population suffering from psychiatric illnesses .A recent survey of 4 biggest hospitals in Mumbai in 2016 showed that 31% of the people who visited OPD in these hospitals were found to be undergoing  treatments for psychiatric illnesses. India is the most unequal society of the world and it is also a big cause for psychic illnesses. All these surely indicate that we are by all standards a very unhappy society. The lockdown is going to further exacerbate this situation in the days to come. So it should become our topmost priority to gain some insights into the concept of happiness and employ some of these insights to make the society happier in general and to keep ourselves and our families happy in particular. This 2 part series is an attempt in that direction ….

A Harvard Study (oh! Please don’t confuse it for hard work!) on Adult Health and Happiness  continuously conducted over a span of more than 80 years (is still underway), is perhaps the longest ever study  undertaken anywhere in the world. The study was conducted on 724 individuals of which 50(approx) are still alive from the sample group (1 became American President). The study looked into medical records, brain scanned the participants, took interviews of their family members and friends and talked to their siblings on almost yearly basis. The current and the fourth Director of this study Dr Robert Waldinger has listed the following takeaways from the study.

1. People who are socially connected to family, friends, society live more longer , are more healthy and happy in their lives. Predictions showed that people who are most satisfied in their relationships at the age of 50 were the healthiest at the age of 80. So it was not their cholesterol /sugar /BP etc that predicted their healthy life 30 years later but the quality of their relationships at that age .So strong relationships with family and friends saved people from not only psychological diseases but also from physiological disease. They had sharper memories and lesser bodily diseases at the age of 80.
2. Quality of relation with one’s life partner becomes a parameter that has crucial significance for health and happiness. It was not the wealth, IQ, social class or status but the kind of relationships that one has with his life partner. It was not that there were no differences or fights between the partners but it was the dependability on the partner that mattered. So while good partners fought they had always a very strong Dependability Factor in relationships which mattered.
3. Common family feuds had a terrible impact on people who hold grudges over longer periods of time. An unhappy marriage is the worst thing for a healthy and happy life.
4. It is better to have 1/2 meaningful ,dependable relationships then 100’s of frivolous relationships /friendships on face book /twitter/instagram/whatspp etc which  don’t contribute to  strong bonding in the real world. We have confused belonging with connectivity and it is having very negative consequences.

Another Meta analysis of 148 studies comprising 3.08 lac participants revealed that

1. Participants with stronger social relationships were 50% more likely to live longer and healthier than those with weaker connections .
2. Online socializing causes loneliness and loneliness is the 3^rd biggest cause of suicides. Neuroscientists have found presence of Mirror Neurons in the human brain which fire together when a person sees another person , not when one is interacting with the internet friends.

Gallup World Polls Surveys which are conducted on an yearly basis on more than 5 lakh people at a time and data from which is utilized in the World Happiness Reports have revealed that it was never the wealth or power or status or fame  that mattered for  happiness. It was the quality of social relationships and act of sharing/gratitude etc that mattered most for happiness. It was the equality in incomes and harmony amongst various social groups that made people happy.

Daniel Kahneman the winner of Nobel prize in 2002 for his work on Behavioural Economics has analysed workings of human brain through two types of Systems. In his seminal work “Thinking Fast and Slow” he calls them System-1and System-2 . A few years earlier he termed them as the Experiencing Self and the Remembering Self. According to Kahneman ,while a Remembering Self or Sys-1 operates automatically ,quickly and with little effort , the Experiencing Self or Sys-2 requires effort and is slow. As per him there is always a cognitive trap to Happiness whereby we often confuse and lump together the notion of “Being Happy in Life” and “Being Happy about Life”.  The problem is that most of the decisions by human beings are taken through Remembering Self. This Remembering Self is an expert  story teller and it has no time dimension. It is based either in the past memories or on the future expectations and for it what defines a story are its very significant moments and particularly its endings. Lets understand all this through a real life situation of 2 patients discussed by  Kahneman himself..

Let’s consider a situation where 2 patients (A and B) are admitted to a hospital for treatment  of a  severe painful infection. Patient A has been admitted for a 30 days, suffers from painful treatment for say first 20 days and feels little pain in the last ten days of treatment. Patient B (on account of less severity of his infection) is admitted for 15 days and suffers pain during first 10 days and then on the last day of his treatment when he is getting relieved. In this example clearly from point of view of Experiencing Self patient A had suffered more than patient B. However, the Remembering Self reaches a contradictory result .When asked to recollect their memories of the treatment, B will always invariably rate his treatment more painful  than  A and A will rate it less painful than B. It is primarily on account of the reason that the Remembering Self of both the patients remembers only the last moments of treatment which were more painful for B than for A. According to Kahneman what could have been done in such a case was that patient’s B could have been endowed with a better story by prolonging his treatment by a few minutes when he felt  very less or no pain. After such an endowment, B will always rate his treatment less painful than A. So what defined the story for the Remembering Self of both A and B were the last moments of treatment and now Remembering Self of B has a better story to tell and recollect lesser painful memories in future.

My take from this story is that we have all lived through this lockdown. All of us must be having some bad and good experiences during this confinement. Our relationships might have got soured during this time of togetherness and also on account of our frustrations and anxiety with the external situation. In order to have less painful memories of this lockdown, what we can do is to make the last moments of this lockdown as pleasant as possible. This can be done through sitting with our loved ones, talking to them and to friends, cracking a joke or dancing with them during these last days, seeking forgiveness from our partners and sharing all our beautiful and pleasant memories. We can cheat our brain’s Remembering Self through some positive experiences. An act of compassion/ charity, showing gratitude that we survived the ordeal and being thankful for all we have and that we could stay with our loved ones for so long can all be such positive experiences . In my opinion anything which may bring smile on your face and on the faces of your loved ones, which relaxes the mind and leads to peace and happiness at home etc are all such positive acts . So get away from your mobiles/social media accounts (of course after reading my blog…!!!) and spend these precious moments with  family and friends with a complete positive framework  of mind aimed at cheating the Remembering Self ….

By His Grace and Blessing part 2 follows…..

Dr. Seema Chaudhary