Happiness Equals?

Cael Moser-Anderson ’25

As I write this, I am driving back home from a college visit. I hear a faint drumming in my ear, the sound of the wind slamming through the open window. I’m thinking about what I want from college, and, more generally, what I want from life. There’s so much — maybe too much — information to absorb, and I’m trying to find out what it all means to me. I do my best to center myself: I know my North Star is happiness — but how do I get there? 

I’ve tried before to think about happiness as a purely mathematical equation. Perhaps, I can quantify my joy as an average value. Imagine a week that unfolds like this: 

Monday - turn in a so-so essay 

Tuesday - day is pretty stress free, maybe a little boring

Wednesday - push off studying and hang out with friends 

Thursday - study all night for a test 

Friday - take the test and do surprisingly well

If we put happiness on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is a miserable day and 10 is the best day ever, we can start to outline how we might “grade” this week. Monday would probably score a six. You get a big assignment out of the way, but it isn’t your best work, so you aren’t necessarily ecstatic. Tuesday is just okay, so we’ll give it a five. Wednesday is fun; eight it is. Thursday is a three because you have no time, and you may be regretting the way you spent yesterday. Friday is a seven, since everything ends up working out. If we average out our “happiness” for the week, we end up with a 5.8. We now have an objective way to measure happiness. 

Here’s the problem: when we go into our weekend, do we really consider the average joy of our week? Not really. We might be feeling really good going into the weekend because the test worked out and we got to spend time with friends. If we go back a day to Thursday night, we’re miserable. We mismanaged our time this week and are likely regretting it. In both cases, we are viewing the past through the distorted lens of our current emotions. It’s impossible to look back at a week and re-experience a moment in our memory. We will always perceive it through the stained-glass-pane that is our current state. 

In ten years, I’ll probably look back on my college years as a collection of lessons learned: some will be positive and some will be negative. In a way, the experiences themselves will become irrelevant, since all I’ll really have is how I choose to remember them. Despite this, I care about my  future self in a way that I don’t care about my past self. Partly because it’s easier to run out of a burning building than into one, and partly because I’m worried about the shape my stained-glass may take.

So what does happiness equal? If you asked half a year ago, I would have told you that I didn’t know. A near death experience this summer gives me an answer: would you do it all again?