EconomistMom.com

…or else most of us would be pretty unhappy right now.  In Sunday’s Washington Post, Carol Graham of the Brookings Institution explains how even economists are starting to realize that not everything can be valued in monetary terms:

How much happiness does money really buy? How do you weigh the relative loss in happiness resulting from a pink slip, a divorce or a diagnosis of illness? Such questions have gone from the fringes to the center of the dismal science, with economics journals now boasting thousands of articles from “Does Happiness Pay?” to “Do Cigarette Taxes Make Smokers Happier?”…

Wherever I look, some simple patterns hold: A stable marriage, good health and enough (but not too much) income are good for happiness. Unemployment, divorce and economic instability are terrible for it. On average, happier people are also healthier, with the causal arrows probably pointing in both directions. Finally, age and happiness have a consistent U-shaped relationship, with the turning point in the mid- to late-40s, when happiness begins to increase, as long as health and domestic partnerships stay sound.

All of this seems rather logical, suggesting that if a government wants to get into the business of promoting happiness, it can pursue some straightforward policy goals, such as emphasizing health, jobs and economic stability as much as economic growth.

But here’s the complicated part. While there are stable patterns in what leads to happiness, there is also a remarkable human capacity to adapt to both prosperity and adversity…

The bottom line is that people can adapt to tremendous adversity and retain their cheerfulness, while they can also have virtually everything — including good health — and be miserable…

And Carol explains that sometimes true happiness over the longer term isn’t easily achieved by focusing on instant gratification:

Broader definitions of happiness — for example, as the opportunity to lead a fulfilling life — suggest deeper objectives that may cause unhappiness, at least in the short term. Overthrowing the French monarch, or defeating the Taliban, are not exercises that bring immediate happiness to mind. Closer to home, efforts to reform our health-care system or address the ballooning budget deficit are unlikely to produce happiness anytime soon. Yet we know that these problems must be addressed to preserve the welfare of our citizens — and our children — over the long term.

The front page of the same Sunday Washington Post featured a survey of Detroit-area residents, with the surprising finding that despite the nation’s highest unemployment rate, nearly two-thirds of them remain “optimistic” about the future of the Detroit area.  I’ve written and speculated about Detroit’s optimism before, it being my home town and my knowing many positive-thinking, hard-working people who are still making a living in the auto industry there.

Still in the very same issue of the Post, Jim Wallis (who also hails from Detroit) has a theory about why that is–that optimism can prevail in a community like Detroit, facing such economic hardship:

In my home town of Detroit, which has been hit especially hard by the recession, with unemployment levels over 30 percent, the Capuchin Fathers are giving away hundreds of thousands of plants, helping to seed a renaissance of hundreds of urban gardens and family farming plots, and providing healthy food, work for the unemployed and an activity for the community to gather around. It may be in the places like these — where all that is left is hope — that new life first shoots up.

So here’s to a Happy New Year and a Happy New Decade even.  No matter the tough times we’re in right now, there are always valuable lessons learned and silver linings to be found, even when we’re not looking for them.  And sometimes the really awful times bring about just the purging and pruning we need to thrive and blossom even better afterwards.