I've been trying that one out in earnest this fall, by signing on to run an annual festival for piano students. The past week and a half has been spent almost entirely in front of the computer, entering, scheduling and re-entering 770 some students and 85 teachers to play and work shifts.
I don't know yet whether this has made me feel happier or more optimistic about things. But at least I can use it for an excuse for just now getting around to a post that should have been done a week ago.
The news was that--surprise--money can buy a little happiness. The study, done by Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School, explains income's effect on two kinds of happiness--day-to-day and the overall feeling that your life is working out.
Yes, people. The science is finally in. As to the former kind of happiness, the magic number is $75,000. The farther below that figure you make, the less happy you are day to day. And on the overall feeling that life is working out (which is how I'd describe optimism or positive attitude) well, money has an impact on that, too. If your income keeps going up above that $75,000, it turns out you have much more of that warm glow of satisfaction with your life. (Accounts of the study here and here.)
So if your life was chugging along fine before the recession, if your family was making at least $75,000 and you kept getting raises then...you were more happy. But if during the past year, you were driving along at highway speed and the car suddenly shifted into reverse? Hmmm.
A lot of people could have told us this a long time ago. I know we certainly can attest to the impact on happiness of a family income well below $75,000.
Somehow, though, it was a surprise to others, who apparently believed until this study the bromide that "Money can't buy you happiness." Wha...You mean it can?
I blame the mythology that's sprung up about the "Greatest Generation." According to a certain segment of pundits, the generation of the Great Depression and World War II all pulled together and sacrificed with smiles on their faces. They all just gritted their teeth and raised themselves up without any help. Not a soul secretly cheered on the Bonnies and Clydes of the day. They were truly saints.
If you ask some of them, it sounds true enough. My grandparents certainly had a lot of heart-warming stories about sharing and good deeds during the Depression. If you said, "Money can't buy happiness," Gram would have heartily agreed.
But I also notice they were both scared--scared to death--of even the slightest blip in the economy. When that cloth-coated Republican President Richard Nixon called for wage and price controls (yes, a Republican. Wage and price controls. You can Google it.) they were all for it.
Any thought that we might be about to return to the Depression brought visible shudders. Yes, there were a few good times.
But go back? Not on your life.
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