The Right Kind of Happiness

Sometimes people ask me: “Isn’t it possible to be happy without G-d?” Or: “I know healthy people who are living normal, happy lives and they have nothing to do with spirituality or religion.” Or: “Why search for the meaning and purpose of our lives when we can just do things that make us feel happy and fulfilled – couldn’t that be the purpose of life in itself?”
 
In order to answer these questions we need to understand that there are two types of “happiness” but only one of them is defined by the Torah as real happiness. We’ll soon find out why.
 
A new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined this very question. Eighty people were interviewed about what makes them happy and their responses fell into two basic categories: activities that left them “feeling good” and activities of “doing good.”  “Feeling good” could result from buying yourself a new car or treating yourself to a lavish vacation; “doing good” was the type of happiness that resulted from pursuing noble goals, finding meaning in life, or doing acts of kindness for others. What the researchers found was that on the conscious level most people could not tell the difference between the first type of hedonistic, self-gratifying type of “happiness” and the second type of happiness based on what we might call more spiritual values such as doing good deeds for others. In other words the researchers found that the two types of happiness felt equally good to those people who were studied.
 
The 80 people who were studied were certainly not rated on their levels of spiritual awareness, but if they had been I’m sure that their levels of spiritual awareness were very low.  People who feel strongly connected to G-d can easily differentiate between the pleasure of physical gratifications and the more lofty satisfaction of the soul that comes from fulfilling the Will of G-d.  In any case the researchers discovered something fascinating.
 
Even amongst the 80 people they studied who could not differentiate at all between the pleasures of the body and the pleasures of the soul. Those who were “doing good” rather than just “feeling good” proved to be benefiting in another remarkable way. A difference between the two types of happiness emerged on a genetic and cellular level.  Those with higher levels of “doing good”  type of happiness had developed a stronger genetic ability to fight off disease. Their genetic makeup showed a stronger expression of antibody and antiviral genes than those who were experiencing the “feeling good” type of happiness whose antibody and antiviral genes were weaker.
 
This study confirms what people who live by spiritual values have always known. When one lives according to the Will of the Creator He rewards that person with a healthier and most likely a longer life in which to do more good for others and for the world. We see that G-d takes care to preserve his more faithful servants whose focus is more on “we” rather than “me.”
 
The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined the pattern of gene expression within the cells responsible for fighting off infectious diseases and defending the body against foreign materials (Fredrickson et al., 2013).
 
What the researchers found was that people experiencing different mixtures of both types of happiness felt equally happy. For conscious experience, neither type of happiness beat the other.
 
Steven Cole, one of the authors of the study explained:

“What this study tells us is that doing good and feeling good have very different effects on the human genome, even though they generate similar levels of positive emotion. Apparently, the human genome is much more sensitive to different ways of achieving happiness than are conscious minds.”

 
So, while doing good and feeling good both make us feel happy, it’s doing good that benefits us at the genetic level.
 
The lead author, Professor Barbara L. Fredrickson, suggests that:

“We can make ourselves happy through simple pleasures, but those ‘empty calories’ don’t help us broaden our awareness or build our capacity in ways that benefit us physically. At the cellular level, our bodies appear to respond better to a different kind of well-being, one based on a sense of connectedness and purpose.