Written by Abigail Libers.
“So how are you?!” a friend asked me at brunch recently. I hadn’t seen her in a while and thought for a moment. “Great!” I replied. “Things have been going really well for me.”
Even I was surprised by my response; it’s rare that I don’t have a complaint at the ready. Apparently my friend was taken aback too. “Really?” she asked. “That’s awesome. I’m happy for you.” And there was an awkward pause. In the silence I realized I had violated an unspoken code. The answer to “How are you?” is supposed to be “I’m so busy and stressed!” And indeed, when I asked what was new with her, she stuck to the script, rattling off complaints: annoyed with her mom, drowning at work.
The exchange made me realize something else. I noticed, strangely, that I felt a little guilty that things were going well for me. That night, as I thought about our conversation, doubts began to creep in: Was I really happy? Or had all my yoga, meditation, and therapy sessions just momentarily tricked me into thinking that I was happy? I reassessed: I had a new job I loved, I’d been dating someone exciting—dammit, I was satisfied. But the whole episode made me wonder, Why is there this happiness catch-22 in which all we want is to feel it, but the moment we do, we can’t accept it? Experts have actually studied this phenomenon and have isolated some pretty good reasons.
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