Happy

by Roko Belic

Happy is a 2011 documentary that’s currently streaming on Netflix (US), Amazon Prime Instant Video, and possibly also Hulu (I haven’t been able to confirm that – if you know, please do comment). It’s one of the most thought-provoking and interesting documentaries that I’ve seen, and since I know many of you enjoy documentaries and nonfiction about the brain and the human body, I wanted to review it.

My kids love a video app called BrainPop!, which features short videos about a plethora of subjects. In one video about world religions, they summed up one of the tenets of Buddhism as follows: negative feelings come from not being in control of something, or not being in possession of something. So, relinquishing control and possession are some of the steps toward enlightenment.

( A | BN | K | G | AB | Au | WorldCat ) Obviously that is incredibly simplified, but that idea of the source of negative feelings centered on control and possession stayed with me, especially since, like many people, I struggle with episodes of depression and anxiety. I know from reading books like Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain that brain chemistry can be altered and improved by regular exercise, though I want to make it clear that I don’t think two hours in the gym can cure anyone of depression – not at all. Depression is an imbalance of several brain chemicals (again, to incredibly simplify something complicated) and is a horrible, nasty beast to deal with – anxiety, too, and other disorders of the brain. And it’s deeply scary to feel completely out of control over how you feel at any given moment. For me, that lack of control on top of everything else exacerbates the problem. So I’m very curious about how I can give myself a small measure of management over how I feel, especially when I feel like my emotions are not under my control.

The documentary Happy built on what I’d learned in Spark, but also illustrated visually a lot of concepts that I’d imagined on my own, and helped me understand them. The basic premise of the documentary focuses on the following questions: What is happiness? What contributes to happiness? Who is happy, and who is not, and can we identify why? (These are all questions I pay a lot of attention to, because having been through miserably long depressive episodes, I treasure and guard my happiness like Smaug sitting on the US Treasury’s gold.) (Non sequitur: imagining myself as a dragon makes me very happy in ridiculously silly ways.) (Anyway.)

The documentary opens with a rickshaw driver in India who lives in a slum, but who, as the narrator and the man himself explained, is among the happiest people in the world. Part of his happiness is based on the fact that he values and appreciates what he has: a window in his home that lets the breeze in, good neighbors and his family around him, and children whom he loves very much. Initially, when I saw the opening scenes, I was a little skeptical as to whether I’d like the film, because I was worried that the use of a man of color living in poverty in India as a tool to make me, the white viewer in the US, feel better about myself would be cloying at best and offensive at worst. But I don’t think the opening is manipulative now that I’ve seen the whole documentary twice.

One of the points the documentary makes is that acquisition of wealth and external items doesn’t have any long term effect on human happiness. This is one part of the film that has resonated with me. Each of us carries a sort of baseline happiness level, which is inherited – much like depression or anxiety or tendencies toward other illnesses. Not much we can do about that inheritance.

That baseline of happiness varies by individual, but in the field of positive psychology, aka the study of psychological happiness, that baseline creates what is called the hedonic adaptation. Whether terrific and awesome things or horrible and painful things happen to us, most humans return to a baseline of happiness, which, if I’m understanding correctly, is informed in a big way by our inherited happiness levels.

But the inherited levels only account for about half of our overall ability to be happy. Moreover, a very small portion of our happiness is affected by the status we have or perceive that we have, and the external items we might acquire, like cars, careers in fields of prestige, luxury items, etc. This is why, for example, shopping for new stuff provides a momentary high, but the high doesn’t last, and prompts more shopping. If a person’s happiness is predicated on the acquisition of a thing, and that thing has been acquired, that thing loses its power to make the individual happy. A new thing must be sought next to sustain happiness and to create the new rush of acquisition and shopping.

The rest of our happiness is more under individual control, and that’s the most interesting part of the documentary for me.  The neurotransmitters in our brains, according to the scientists, doctors, and psychologists interviewed, receive dopamine, and we have more dopamine receptors as children than we do as adults. As we age, the dopamine receptors wither and die off. But the more we use those receptors by introducing activities that create dopamine, the more those receptors stay healthy. As one person in the film (I apologize that I can’t remember which one) put it, “Use it or lose it.”

Activities that cause the creation of dopamine include exercise, but also new experiences that challenge us with variety and variation, too. There’s a name for experiencing the high of mental concentration and dopamine production, a mental state which Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described as “flow” in his book, Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience. The activities that give you “flow,” that state of immersive delight in an experience that’s challenging your mind and giving you all the dopamine you could ask for, are the activities that can positively affect your happiness levels.

This made me think of the writers I know who talk about the absolute bliss of writing when they’re fully immersed in the world they’ve created, and that same bliss of a reader who is equally immersed in the world they’re reading about. I don’t know if anyone has done a study of the dopamine levels of romance readers, or of fiction readers in general, but I suspect based on my own experience and on surrounding anecdata that reading may foster increased dopamine levels. For me, it’s not just reading that gives me “flow;” I have that same blissed out focus when I’m gardening, walking my dogs, listening to a book while cross stitching, snowboarding or paddle boarding, for example. Everyone’s “flow” activities are different, but knowing what they are can help an individual fire up the dopamine receptors, which tend to lift mood in a hurry, if I’m understanding the science correctly.

There are some terribly poignant moments in the documentary, too, such as the case of those in Japan who have died from overworked and stress. The Japanese have a term for it: karoshi, death by overwork. The interviews with a widow whose husband suffered a heart attack at work after a malfunction was discovered at the plant he managed were heartbreaking – and made me think of the American workaholic culture and corresponding expectations that I struggle with, too.

But the idea that happiness is an attainable goal, an achievement worth savoring, is a concept I find very inspiring. When my mood and outlook are bleak, and I have a few too many days in a row of feeling down and unsure, the idea that there are things I can do to challenge myself and help improve my brain chemistry feels very empowering – along with the knowledge that I am fortunate enough to have doctors who take my health as seriously as I do.

When I read Spark, I most appreciated the thorough scientific explanation that brain chemistry has a specific set of balances, and when those balances are upset, mood disorders can be created (well, hello there, over simplifying again). The things that cause the upset of those balances are not the fault of the individual, and they’re not under the individual’s control – which is terrifying.

With the documentary Happy, I most appreciated the explanation of the theories of positive psychology that explain which parts of our happiness are out of our control, and which parts we do have some influence over. I wish there had been a bit more exploration of the brain reactions that occur when one is in a state of “flow,” and I disliked some of the individuals profiled, such as the motivational speaker who I felt was overly touchy with the middle schoolers he was speaking to. But those issues are minor compared to how much enjoyment I’ve received pondering the ideas in the film. It’s a little over an hour, and I very much recommend it if you’re curious about these subjects like I am.

Happy is available on many streaming services, including Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video. It’s also available on DVD from BN and Amazon, as well as other vendors.