On May 21 in the Op-ed Page of New York Times I read an extremely interesting article by Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard which had the title “What you don’t know makes you nervous”. The article essentially probed the prevailing state of happiness among Americans, particularly as it relates to the current economic downturn. The article mentioned that Americans are smiling less and worrying more than a year ago, that happiness is down and sadness is up and that they are getting less sleep and smoking more cigarettes. The author commented, however, that light wallets are not the cause of heavy hearts, because after all most persons in that country have more inflation-adjusted dollars than their grandparents had and that they weren’t living in a state of unrelieved scare presumably as they did during the 2nd World War or even the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union. He also noted that middle class Americans still enjoy more luxury than upper-class Americans enjoyed a century earlier. His conclusion was clear, that people can be perfectly happy with less than they had last year and less than what they have now. His opinion was that it wasn’t dearth of dollars that were making people miserable, but that it was possibly the uncertainty related to the future.

It can be said that money is important, but not all important. I am reminded from my own experience of an occasion when I was still in my 20s and had the luxury of a motorcycle to go around which gave me far greater pride than I could possibly get if I was driving a Rolls-Royce today, not that I ever would! I was then living in the housing complex of the Diesel Locomotive Works at Varanasi and there were a large number of hume pipes lying by the roadside to be installed underground. In those days project management skills, and particularly those displayed by the municipal authorities and other local bodies would not have earned a prize of any kind. Hence, typically, equipment and material would be bought, but either on account of budgetary uncertainties or poor management practices, this would be lying around for long periods of time unutilized. These large hume pipes often became the residence of daily wage earners who came from villages seeking employment in construction activities. On one occasion I was with a Canadian teacher who was amazed to see a person living in one of these pipes singing away and beating an earthen pot as a drum. She asked me how such poverty can provide happiness that was clearly evident in this individual’s case. I tried to explain this by saying that, perhaps, this person had earned Rs 10 that day, had spent Rs 2 out of that for his meals and had probably set aside Rs 8 to send home to his family. For him, therefore, the evening was an appropriate time to rejoice and his achievement in earning what he thought was a handsome amount an appropriate reason to do so.

Happiness in life is based on expectations. If expectations are unrealistic, clearly happiness is not likely to appear as a consequence. On the other hand, if expectations are realistic and people strive to meet them, satisfaction is generally available in abundance. It is not that people should stop dreaming and only look for what is easy, but then one must also have the ability to convert dreams into reality. At the same time the mental and emotional strength to accept failure in realizing dreams as the culmination of efforts which did not quite reach the levels that were required. Hence, one could learn from such experiences and make the next dream come true. I believe there is need for a halt to the relentless pursuit of only material things and for human beings to consider where it is that we should draw the line between hankering after materialistic goals and what is considered as success in today’s world and where it is that one looks for deeper forms of joy and happiness. In this context what Franklin D. Roosevelt said as quoted by Daniel Gilbert is extremely pertinent. He urged Americans to remember that “Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money” and to recognize “the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success.”

Could it be that the current economic downturn will bring about realignment of human values and priorities from which, perhaps, we may seek greater satisfaction and happiness from human relations, doing good to others and creating a sense of oneness with society rather than saturating ourselves with material things, gadgets and devices such that we miss out on what life is really all about.

A change in mindsets and values, I believe, is long overdue, and the right place to start would be at the level of schools, such that the schoolchildren of today do not emulate blindly what recent generations before them have done. There is, of course, also a need for reorienting the mindsets of adults, so that ethics play a larger role in economic decision making and moral standards are raised higher in public life. All this may seem like a tall order, but it is entirely possible that with a confluence of the current economic downturn, growing concerns about climate change and widening disparities between rich and poor, we may just become collectively conscious of changes that are needed to be brought about. It may, therefore, happen that the biggest benefit of the current downturn would emerge as a more environmentally conscious society and a happier population of young and old across the planet.