Researchers Susan Fournier and Michael Guiry found that only 15% of the people they surveyed said that they’d be satisfied “living a comfortable life.” The other 85% of their survey claimed that they would only be happy when their income and lifestyle reflected that of the richest 18% of American households.
“Who is rich? The one who is happy with his portion.” Pirke Avot 4:1
* *
I have put Ch. 6 to bed (for the time being–that one especially is going to come back to haunt me in the revisions) and am now flailing about in my cluelessness about Ch. 7. Especially hard is that now I’ve gotten to the part where the linear narrative slows down a bunch–in terms of the personal stuff, the last three chapters cover more or less the same time period. Which means I have to be extra-super-duper more on top of making sure they stay on topic, because it’s easy enough to wander down one street for a long time before I realize that this bit doesn’t belong here at all. Holistic writing is fun like that. I’ve already got one of those (hey, that much less I have to do for Ch. 9, I guess) and now have to figure out if what I’ve been doing today even goes where I have it, or if I want to just hyperlink it to Ch. 5. Ack. And this is with the comprehensive Table of Contents that I wrote out for the proposal (which, oddly enough, seems to keep being useful and to which I am more or less staying true. I guess that’s my karmic payback for the sweat, tears, and million versions of the book’s structure that I went through when trying to write the proposal.)
Anyway. The word count to date. Lots more words to be gleefully added to the word counter in a month or so, I hope.
|
|
|
44,358 / 80,000
(55.4%) |
Danya cited: Researchers Susan Fournier and Michael Guiry found that only 15% of the people they surveyed said that they’d be satisfied “living a comfortable life.” The other 85% of their survey claimed that they would only be happy when their income and lifestyle reflected that of the richest 18% of American households.
If it makes you feel better, it turns out that althogh people may report many things, they are in fact very bad at knowing their own states of mind. NOt only are people very bad at [redicted what makes them happy, they aren’t even very good at knowing when they’re in ap particular state of mind. But that generality aside, it turns out that for most people money is completely unrelated to happiness. In fact, studies show pretty conclusivey that tendencies towards happiness and unhappiness are fairly inflexible, in the sensethat sudden changes may lead to a temporary swing in mood ( win a lot of money you may be happy for a while – although you’rea ctually just as likely to get stressed as heck- but you will swing back to your normal state of mood within a few weeks; suffer a great trauma – even things like paralysis- and you may be sad for a while but most people within a few weeks to months also swing back to pretty muich where they were before the trauma.
So, over all, the study shows mostly that people have no idea what makes them happy.