And Out Comes Happiness

There are some old songs from the time of the revolutionary war.  The victorious colonists took “Yankee Doodle” as their theme song, but when Cornwallis’ army was marched out of Yorktown in defeat, the fifes played “The World Turn’d Upside Down.”   This is how it goes:

If buttercups buzzed after the bee,

If boats were on land, churches on sea,

If ponies rode men and the grass ate the cows,

Then cats should be chased into holes by the mouse … (Luther 39-40)

You get the idea.  The underfunded, undertrained, outnumbered Americans had managed (with a great deal of help from France) to beat one of the best armies in the world.  It was devastating.

How many of you are feeling the same way about the COVID-19 quarantine situation?  Almost everything we were doing on purpose as activity professionals has become taboo or turned “upside down.”  Group socialization is good for the residents – no, it is dangerous.  Human touch is good for them – no, it is dangerous.  Getting out of their room is good for them – no, it is dangerous.  Singing together is good for them – no, it’s dangerous.  Visitors are good for them – no, they’re dangerous.  Assisting someone so they can be successful with a craft is good – no, you’re standing too close.  Loners are more susceptible to depression, etc. – no, they’re safer from the virus.  It seemed as though I could feel the gears in my brain screeching to a slow stop.

I could not get a picture in my brain of what the future of activities would be like.  What I could imagine looked pretty grim.  We started trying different things on the units, but it was not the same quality of life for my residents that I had been striving for these past years.  If we couldn’t provide quality of life, then what was the purpose of providing care?  Visions of the “bubble boy” came to mind.  Would it be possible for my residents to ever find happiness again, given the issues with the pandemic?

I obviously needed some outside input.  The Bible actually has a lot to say about happiness.  Useful stuff.  Some 2,700 related passages (Alcorn 19)!  I also began cruising the online TED talks.  Each TED talk is officially 18 minutes of presentation by an expert on a topic that expert is passionate about.  One of the first things I found was a 2004 talk about happiness entitled, The Surprising Science of Happiness, by Dan Gilbert.  He was describing the results of large-scale cognitive science experiments on how the brain functions.  2004 was before COVID-19.  It was even before the economic crash of 2008.  Would there be anything useful in it?

Gilbert states that the pre-frontal cortex of our brains has the ability to simulate experiences for us before we have them.  We call that imagination.  However well that works, he says the problem is that we are not so good at predicting how those simulations would affect us if they came true.  That is called the “impact bias” (TED, 2004).  He offers the example of imagining winning the lottery or else becoming a paraplegic and estimating which one would make you happier.  Well, duh, you say.  But the actual data from people who have experienced one or the other shows that neither set of individuals is particularly happier one year later.  Your prediction was, predictably, biased by lack of understanding of how your brain works.

So, what happened?  How could these two radically different scenarios result in a similar outcome?  Gilbert again explains that our brains have the tendency to change how we view our situation in a way that lets us feel better about it.  He says that we “synthesize” happiness with what he calls our “psychological immune system” (TED, 2004).  Whoa! Did he say something about an immune system?  Well, that certainly is timely.  And immunity to permanent devastation related to a bad situation sounds pretty useful.  How you look at something really does make a difference.  Actually, Gilbert says that except in certain types of cases, most outcomes even out after about 3 months!  The average natural happiness from what looks like a happy situation will tend to equal the average synthetic happiness from what used to look like a bad situation.

As a matter of fact, I think I have observed this very process at work in our building.  Two and a half months ago, the residents were not happy to be losing access to family visits, communal dining and group activities.  They became more upset as time went on.  Then I began noticing that there was more acceptance.  A new normal was setting in.  In fact, staff seems to be having more trouble adapting than the residents themselves.  A co-worker wondered if I was struggling because of the loss of control over my part of the activity program.  Well, yes, but hadn’t the residents also lost even more control over their own lives?  Gilbert might have an answer for this, too.  He describes other experiments that prove we synthesize happiness the best when we have no choices (TED, 2004).  Apparently, choices produce second-guessing which tends to rob us of happiness.  Staff is doing the second-guessing while the residents are busy adapting. 

So, yes, both faith and science tell us that our residents can find happiness in a quarantined world.  Some of us would say it’s a gift that God ‘hard-wired’ in.

©Donna Stuart, ADC   May 31, 2020

Alcorn, Randy. Happiness. Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2015.

Gilbert, Dan. (2004, February).  The Surprising Science of Happiness.  [Video File].  Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_the_surprising_science_of_happiness

Luther, Frank. Americans and Their Songs. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1942.