And...we're back!

Well after a not-at-all deserved break, Staring Through Shades is back. At least for now.

First, and update:

I am in France, "teaching" English in Lille, which is about an hour from London, Brussels, and Paris. Actually, I am living in Lille and teaching in Valenciennes, about 40 minutes by train to the south.

Yesterday I heard an interview with this guy named Eric Weiner, who used to be a foreign correspondent for NPR (*shakes fist at Eric Weiner in jealousy*) and then went around the world writing his book, The Geography of Bliss.

I have not read the book, but he said some interesthttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifing things in the interview. One was that happy places tend to be cold, not hot. His theory is that in cold climates everyone has to work together or everyone dies, and this has fostered a strong sense of community in places like Denmark, Switzerland, and Iceland.

Iceland, by the way, seems to be paradise, despite months of 24-hour darkness. Apparently, as Weiner told Stephen Colbert, in Iceland they don't drink at all during the week and then binge on the weekends. Colbert replied: "So they're all like college students?" Any connection to the fact that many people city their college years as the "happiest" of their lives?

Another study found that both lottery winners and paraplegics tend to return to their previous level of happiness, from before their great (mis)fortunes. (Though I remember this study being cited in an economics paper from, if I remember correctly, my Public Policy Analysis class, when I saw the sample sizes of this study, 22 for lottery winners and 29 for paraplegics, the economist in me winced.)

In any case, the science of happiness is one of the new things in Academe, and it's starting to be debated in policy arenas as well as those of psychologists and economics. So maybe fifteen years from now there'll be a Federal Department of Health, Happiness, and Human Services.

But thinking of happiness reminded me (of course) of Aristotle, and a Scav item from my first year: Eudaemonia. If I remember my Aristotle accurately, eudaemonia is a sort of enlightened happiness, a happiness of purpose, as opposed to, say, a happiness of ease, ignorance, indulgence, or hedonism. This is the happiness that people pay 40k a year at liberal arts colleges to receive, an educated satisfaction that comes from being educated. Now, for all it's virtues, the U of C is more about the enlightenment part than the happiness part (though that's getting better). But, there is an element, perhaps similar to Weiner's idea about cold climates, of forced community about the U of C, as well as an environment that tremendously heightens contrasts of ecstasy and misery.

An example: I took Stat 244, which is the most rigorous intro-level statistics course, and though I often describe it as one of my favorite courses, it was also probably the most difficult. I regularly worked all night on problem sets only to get a 70%. The reward for that work was that I felt I gained a fundamental understanding of the statistical theories and algorithms rather than just having memorized the equations. Needless to say the exam (which was my last of the term) was difficult, and I studied the material for days until the time came to sit in the huge lecture hall of Kent - the chemistry building was the only one with rooms big enough to fit everyone in Stat - for two hours. But then, and I can vividly remember this as one of the highlights of college, I walked out of Kent, knowing that I had finished and survived, and discovered that during the exam it had begun to snow. The U of C looks beautiful under a fresh layer of snow, with the gray and white and brown bringing out the red roofs and dark green bushes and pine trees. And I was consciously happy, aware of my own happiness, at the snow and returning to my warm room and being done with exams and then starting vacation and then going to Paris. And, I felt tremendously satisfied with my work: I had paid attention in class and struggled through every assignment and studied furiously and in the end had done rather well.

The point of this example is not just that a miserable present can turn into a wonderful past, but also that happiness is the result of the past, present, and future. It is the things we have done, the things we are doing, and the things we hope to do.