Arthur Brooks: Happiness Lessons from a Miserable Wretch

What is the secret to happiness? We’d like to believe there’s a silver bullet. That we can snap our fingers and dispel every source of despair, every tragedy, every inexplicably unfair event in the news. That the next app, the next pill, the next book, the next dietary restriction will finally quiet the crisis of meaning lurking beneath the freneticism of modern life.

There is an entire industry built on this promise. And there is an equally strong camp on the other side, insisting that unhappiness is simply the price of being alive in an unfair world.

In reality, of course, the truth is somewhere in between. Happiness is achievable. But it’s not easy.

Enter Arthur Brooks. Arthur is an acclaimed professor, No. 1 New York Times best-selling author, and one of the world’s leading experts on the science of happiness. At a time when so much modern commentary seeks to inflame tensions or compress nuance, Arthur has dedicated his career to studying what truly makes a good life—and how, practically, we can achieve one for ourselves.

Which is why we’re so thrilled to announce that as of today, Arthur is joining The Free Press as a columnist. Every week, he will help us wrestle with life’s greatest moral questions: viral scandals that reveal our values, AI bots that replace romantic relationships, questionable social-media trends, the rise of GLP-1 drugs—and what all of this does to our sense of meaning, purpose, and joy.

Today, we bring you the inaugural installment of his column, which will be published every Monday. Check back on Friday for his weekly newsletter. And don’t forget to sign up here to get both delivered straight to your inbox. From next week, the column will be exclusively for paying subscribers—but if that’s not you, you’re in luck: We have a sale this week, so click here to save 20 percent.

Arthur’s is a voice we need now more than ever. We couldn’t be happier to welcome him aboard. So without further ado, welcome to The Pursuit of Happiness with Arthur Brooks. —The Editors

The day I got tenure should have been one of the happiest of my professional life. It was 2004, and I was a professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, one of the finest policy schools in the world. I had busted my pick for years to get that permanent gig, working 12-hour days on academic papers that had literally tens of readers. I dreamed about how proud it would have made my beloved late father. And I nailed it.

But I was miserable. Part of that was circumstantial: My son had bitten three kids that day at his own preschool birthday party, and had to be removed. (The party continued without him.) But part of it was existential: Life suddenly felt bereft of purpose and goals.

And that attitude pretty much sums up my life. This might surprise you, because I am a specialist in the science of human happiness. Just as a professional athlete must be naturally athletic, it would be safe, you might think, to assume that I am a naturally happy person. I’m not.

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Part of this is genetic. Studies of identical twins separated at birth and adopted into separate families—something that occurred in the mid-20th century—show that about half of one’s natural level of happiness is genetic. And I come from pessimistic, melancholic stock. Fourteen generations ago, my first direct ancestor in the New World—a starchy Puritan named Henry Brooks who arrived in Concord, Massachusetts, around 1630—was blessed to live to 92, had many children, prospered economically, and even married for a third time at age 91. Nonetheless, a year before his death, he summed up his long life in just three words: “Stricken in years.”

Indeed, just as it was for old Henry, the bright side has always been elusive for me. On tests of well-being such as the well-validated Cantril Ladder, I always tended to sit, anxious and resentful, in the bottom quartile of the population.

I understood this about myself when I was young, but it took a long time to do something about it. After all, the search for happiness wasn’t my first vocation—nor second or third, for that matter. After growing up in Seattle, I skipped college to spend my 20s as a professional French hornist. That included a stint in the City Orchestra of Barcelona, which I accepted as part of a quixotic scheme to win the heart of a Spanish girl I had met on a weeklong Europe trip, but who spoke no English (just as I spoke no Spanish or Catalan).

Improbably, tilting at that relationship windmill produced an excellent marriage that has now passed 34 years, with three kids (including the Biter, who wound up channeling his bellicosity for good as a U.S. Marine sniper) and grandchildren who are proliferating at an alarming rate, even for Catholics. Following my musical gap decade, I finished college, got my PhD, and followed my dad (and his dad) into academia, teaching top-notch students and publishing research I found interesting. After 10 years, I left to serve as president of the American Enterprise Institute, one of the oldest and most influential think tanks in the country. That lasted another decade.

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I tell you all this not to rifle off my résumé, but to make this point: I have lived an utterly charmed life, full of love, faith, fascinating work, and even some professional success. And yet, ungrateful wretch that I am, I rarely enjoyed it. I was a chronic complainer, the one you might have overheard saying, “First class on United Airlines has really gone downhill.” It’s not that I wanted to be this way, and I was sorry I was so, especially because it was hard on my naturally sunny, Mediterranean wife.

Finally, about 10 years ago, after enduring my ingratitude for decades, la española suggested something: “Perhaps you should use your PhD to study your own unhappiness.” Well, more or less; I think her exact words were, “¿Por qué no te estúdias a ti mismo, Einstein?” (You can put that into Google translate if you need to.) Solid advice, I thought. Could there be a scientific way to make myself happier?

So, I turned my attention full-time to the science of human well-being, a research field that has exploded over the past three decades. And in 2019, I returned to academia and dedicated my work to writing, speaking, and teaching the subject—to figuring it out for myself once and for all, and sharing it as widely as possible with others.

It became clear that I wasn’t the only one interested in this topic. My classes at Harvard Business School were immediately oversubscribed. The phone rang constantly, and my teaching expanded far beyond the university, with lectures to audiences all over the world. The books I wrote attracted considerably more than tens of readers. And I heard from the readers about how the science I was presenting was helping them in their lives—messages at first now and then, and then, every single day.

As it turns out, people were interested in the science of happiness for the very same reason I was: They were struggling. Indeed, it quickly became clear that happiness—actually, unhappiness—is the crisis of our time.

Anger, stress, sadness, and worry have reached historic highs. Americans are increasingly “not too happy” about their lives. Young people are plagued with ever-rising rates of mental illness. We have become a whole nation of miserable, ungrateful wretches.

Why? The causes are complex. Among them: the decline of faith, marriage, childbearing, friendship, and meaningful careers; the mobile phones and apps that turned life into a simulation; the polarization fomented by political parties and exacerbated by the media; and the policy response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which left a generation of Americans suffering from loneliness and isolation that may, for many, prove permanent. Readers of The Free Press will be familiar with many of these societal issues.

The question was, and is: What do we do about it, individually and as a nation?

That is the question I am joining The Free Press to help you answer, for yourself and to teach others. Not through mere speculation, but through what I have learned and continue to learn, combining the best insights of modern science with the most enduring wisdom of religious and philosophical traditions.

Despite what some claim, the answer to our crisis of unhappiness does not lie in politics or policy. A tyrannical state may make us miserable, but even government at its best cannot make us happy. The American Founders knew this, which is why Thomas Jefferson asserted that American citizens are endowed by our Creator not with the right to have happiness, but to pursue it. The authorities had an obligation to get out of our way so that we, the people (chronic malcontents that we tend to be), could engage in this pursuit as individuals.

To say that the government has failed to do so is a spectacular understatement. But that particular complaint is not my main focus. Rather, it is this: The mind-made nature of our mass misery means that there is enormous demand for something better—a cultural renaissance of love, meaning, and spiritual nutrition. From this perspective, the epidemic of unhappiness is a huge opportunity—not just to gather new knowledge, but also to make real change for good in the world.

Starting today, and continuing every Monday, I will be publishing a column tackling the big puzzles of life: how you can find your faith or save your marriage; how to set New Year’s resolutions that are most likely to succeed; how to resist conspiracies; and what tests you can take to see how you compare in well-being to others. I will also answer your questions, sometimes in this column, and more often in my weekly newsletter, which will be sent out every Friday—and for which I’d encourage you to sign up. And in just a few months, look to these pages to find a first look at my forthcoming book, The Meaning of Your Life, available everywhere on March 31.

If talk of happiness and well-being strikes you as a little abstract or woolly, don’t worry: My column won’t give you smiley-face, self-improvement claptrap. That stuff doesn’t work, because it’s based on a false premise that some motivational slogan (“Choose happiness!”) is all you need to live differently and better.

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Rather, getting happier is a skill like any other. In medical school, if you want to figure out how to remove an appendix without killing a patient, you have to learn about the operation by observation, practice under supervision, and then communicate how to do it to others to solidify your own comprehension. So it is with happiness: To get enduringly happier, you need to understand the science, change your habits and behavior in tangible ways, and explain what you have learned to others.

This method works. I’ve seen it work in my students, by the thousands. And I’ve seen it work in myself as well. At the age of 61, if not yet exactly stricken in years, I still have gloomy genes. I still complain too much. But I am 60 percent happier on the Cantril Ladder than I was a decade ago, and there is a lot of progress to come. (Follow this column, and you will see how I got that percentage; you can track yours, too.)

For the first time in my life, I feel I have a sacred vocation: to lift others up and bring them together. Life feels richer than it ever did, more alive, more full of love. I realize that first class on United is actually quite nice.

And, along the way, I have come to believe that my own genetic gloominess was not old Henry’s curse, but rather, his gift: It was the impetus to dig into the most interesting science I have ever encountered, and an opportunity to meet what I believe is a massive pent-up demand for a better life.

We all must work on our own happiness, but that project is best and most joyfully done together. Which is why you should consider this first column the beginning of a conversation: Write to me in the comments section to tell me what issues you would like me to address, or what questions you’d like me to answer.

As Jefferson clearly understood, the freedom to pursue happiness is the secret to building a truly great nation—one that is a gift to civilization. That pursuit isn’t an easy one; it never has been. But it’s one of the most worthwhile in the world. Thanks for joining me on it. See you next week.

The Pursuit of Happiness with Arthur Brooks will be back this week with a newsletter on Friday. His column returns next Monday. Sign up here to get both delivered straight to your inbox. And write to Arthur in the comments section with questions or suggestions on what he should cover next.

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