Got happiness?

Delivering happiness is serious business

Recently, I flew on Southwest Airlines, the happy company that knows how to make a profit while having fun. Their latest in-flight magazine Spirit featured, fittingly, the topic of “Happiness.”

“What’s there to know about happiness?” you ask. First of all, having it isn’t “a simple matter of yes or no,” according to the article’s author Taffy (now, there’s a happy name) Brodesser-Akner. Instead, we’re supposed to find, choose, and create happiness. 

It turns out stuffy institutions like Harvard University are taking this happiness thing quite seriously. In fact, the most popular class offered at the Harvard Business School is a semester-long study in happiness. Course instructor Professor Tal Ben-Shahar speaks of universally human experiences, saying, “There are two kinds of people who don’t experience painful emotions . . . psychopaths and the dead.” OK, then. Is this supposed to comfort us? I guess his "insight" means that, when we don’t feel happiness but are still living and breathing, we should at least be glad we're still standing on two feet.

Anyone who has flown on Southwest knows that each flight is meant to be just a little bit fun or at least a little bit funny. The company itself is serious about not taking itself too seriously, hiring people willing to promote its happiness brand. 

Many years ago, when the airline first got off the ground (haha), an acquaintance of mine worked as one of its flight attendants. His eccentric, out-of-bounds sort of personality fit right in with this culture of happiness. For him, every flight became a personal challenge to make people smile, and he went to great lengths to do so. Although I never saw him perform live, I was told he could put on quite a show. For example, instead of describing emergency procedures, he would dramatize in-flight accidents, turning dull and routine into something hilariously entertaining. Passengers guffawed through the usually boring safety protocol spiel as they watched him frantically blow air into the red tube of the yellow safety vest, plop himself down on the floor of the aisle, and pretend to madly row himself to safety. 

Southwest hasn’t earned those smiles for nothing.

A different article in the same company magazine suggests a few “Pleasure Principles” to live by. Most people have figured these out: show children you’re happy, get along with your co-parent, act kindly, and eat your meals with other people. The best tips, though, are the last two, both based on research:

1. The quickest happiness booster is exercise, and when we can make that happiness last longer if we are part of a team.
2. The best predictor of happiness is the quantity and quality of a person’s social ties.

Both of these tips made me think of my mother who is 90 years old. She exercises every day, and, when it comes to friends, she definitely has the quantity thing down. With just her huge posterity alone (about 250 of us), she stays socially active and involved in many people’s lives. And, even though many of her peers have died, she still manages to connect with friends from years past. Just the other day she had lunch with a friend from high school, and they talked for hours. More recently, she went to a funeral of a long-time church friend and reconnected with all kinds of people who remembered her fondly. (Funerals, it turns out, are big social events for Mom.)

The last part of the article talked about possessions people felt brought them joy. Allowed to only select one object, they chose things as simple as a garden vegetable or a cowboy hat. Others decided on less unusual treasures such as a family memory album or a pet. Personally, probably because I grew up poor but happy, I'm inclined to agree with the oft-repeated platitude, “Money can’t buy you happiness.” But I couldn't help but think of how much I love my tech gadgets. For me, it would be a toss-up between my MacBook and my iPod. 

What makes you happy?