What if pursuing happiness doesn’t really make you happy? What if we’re not meant to live in a perpetual state of wish fulfillment, obsessing over what we don’t have and how we can get it? What if the add to cart mentality that gives us a sudden rush of pleasure will never add up to a fully satisfied life?
What if happiness is a lie?
Those are the questions asked and answered by therapist Shawn Léon Nowotnik in his provocative book, is F*ck Happiness: The Search for Meaning in a World Gone Mad Chasing Happiness. Nowotnik paints a convincing picture — of the dangerous way we’re told to pursue happiness in advertising, in social media, and in self-help books that promise endless bliss if only we did these ten exercises every day, etc. Happiness has become a marketing ploy, that’s robbing us of the chance to experience contentment and live a full life. It’s a trap of perpetual highs and lows that keeps us from actual contentment, satisfaction, fulfillment, and love. In some cases, it also preys on human fragility and can seriously affect mental health.
Artist, author, filmmaker and therapist, Nowotnik spent a fair amount of time working in Hollywood — a veritable happiness factory, until a shattering loss prompted a change of focus. As a practicing therapist, he’s worked with countless people struggling to meet an impossible standard of positivity and joy. As he says in this engaging book, life isn’t meant to be happy all the time. Expecting a continuous flow of happy moments is making us miserable and preventing us from experiencing what life really is: a mess of ups, downs and contradictions, in which real meaning and a sense of fulfillment comes from our connections to others and our embrace of our own unique, authentic, quirky selves.
In essence, happiness has little to do with feeling happy. It has to do with being real, being willing to feel uncomfortable at times, and giving up the desire for perfection — in ourselves or in others. Nowotnik isn’t a “fail fast” proponent, but he does encourage looking at failure through an entirely different lens: not as a moment of weakness to be forgotten as fast as possible, but an opportunity to strengthen and grow. And while this isn’t a book about choosing nonconformity as a means to empowerment, there’s plenty about finding our own grooves — be it embracing our gender identity, seeking the company of those who welcome authenticity, or honoring the differences in all of us.
The book is a fast read, with smart storytelling to go along with the author’s heartfelt and enthusiastic guidance. Nowotnik shares quick vignettes of a whole range of public figures — people of substance and renown, from J.K. Rowling to Albert Einstein to David Bowie. As he shows, they’re all complicated people who had to push well beyond the cliche of “happiness” to discover themselves, live and work with a sense of meaning, and succeed in their own ways. It’s reassuring proof that refusing to conform to the happiness myth is a far better way to live.
Garth Thomas