I wouldn’t be surprised if many 2021 Brown acceptees ultimately decide to make College Hill their home due to our distinguished reputation for happiness. Whether it’s the prominent pass-fail system or the welcoming New England campus — with an even more welcoming student body — there are many factors that come to mind when considering our utopian status. But it is no secret that while Brunonia contains the happy, it is also home of the sad, the struggling and the skeptical — and I am not just referring to differences among us all. At different points in a Brown career, a single student can experience all four of these personas. Like any other university, unhappiness plagues our campus for infinite reasons, many individualized and personal. Yet instead of examining the extent of truth behind our ranking on the collegiate barometer of joy, I wish to specifically discuss how we conceptualize our pursuit for happiness.
There exists a misconception that every checkbox we mark off on our goal sheet is simultaneously another point in our life happiness log. But we need to differentiate accomplishing goals from being content in the future. In fact, I would go as far to say that no matter the size of your aspirations — whether it’s running a business or running a mile — they all hold an equal promise of happiness: none at all. Too much of the time, we associate things like landing the perfect internship with everything in our lives coming together, making us content. But who’s to say scoring a coveted post-graduation position promises anything more than a coveted post-graduation position?
Though I haven’t interacted with a science textbook since high school, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle remains as clear in my mind as any of my recent college readings. I won’t pretend to understand physics in any complex way and thus will keep my explanation simple: The idea is that we cannot know both the position and the speed of a particle at the same time. Essentially, the more accurately we understand one of these values, the less we understand about the other. By observing the atom, we alter it.
Similarly, it seems that through trying to quantify our targeted happiness by the number of goals we reach, we are subjecting the concept itself to a similar constant observation. Just as our perception of the atom changes in our efforts to pinpoint its location, our idea of happiness alters in our attempts to identify where it lies among our goal sheet checkboxes. Conflating contentment with specific achievements — getting the A, losing weight, taking that dream vacation — can leave us unsatisfied. With the pressure of the next empty boxes, we are unable to appreciate past accomplishments and enjoy lasting happiness. More often than not, we find ourselves disappointed, as the anticipation of perfect bliss has left us with unmet expectations. The concept of “being happy” is an abstract notion, so it seems arbitrary to associate contentment with such concrete milestones.
Perhaps instead of being defined by specific, significant accomplishments, happiness lurks in the mundane. By shifting energy from chasing goals to instead addressing the smaller, negative occurences in our routines, we can create an inviting ground for contentment to enter our lives. Consider confronting the daily decisions that you can actually locate: mindless social media scrolling that evokes feelings of FOMO, letting others’ voices overwhelm your own, choosing an hour of studying over an hour of needed self-care. We dismiss these negative elements because they don’t necessarily impede our ability to achieve larger goals and therefore have long gone neglected. But these smaller headaches build up and may be the essential detriments to our contentment.
Quit associating undefinable happiness with tangible goals; accomplishments vow to make you an accomplished person — there are no guarantees about being a happy one. Because happiness and being successful are separate pursuits, we never have to view them as impeding one another. So don’t stop taking that step toward your larger aspirations, but simultaneously be cognizant of taking that hour for self-care now. When it comes down to it, I can both strive to graduate from Brown and take the few hours to watch Netflix, guilt-free.
Rebecca Okin ’19 can be reached at rebecca_okin@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and other op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
