Happy?

Unexpectedly, I got confused and reconsidered my happiness while listening to his lecture. On the stage of “TED Talks”, Prof. Daniel Kahneman talked under the title of ” The Riddle of Experience vs. Memory,” which was very interesting to me because I had been thinking recently that I felt the happiest at the present in my life.

He says that there are two selves in terms of perception of happiness: “experiencing self” and “remembering self”. Between the two, “remembering self” is much more dominant when people feel happy. We keep what we are experiencing only for three seconds, and forget one after another; we can’t keep in mind every detail in the end. On the other hand, we remember a few things that are impressive in our experience. Therefore, when we consider whether or how we are happy, it depends only on what we have remembered. What is happiness? It varies from person to person; however, there are, at least, some basic conditions required from economic or public point of view, for people to feel happy as a whole. His idea of two selves would be useful to improve policies along with the development of polls such as Gallup.  

In my case, I said that I felt happiest now, which means that only my “remembering self” was judging so. In the end, he said happiness couldn’t be measured because people feel very differently concerning to how they feel happy.

I wrote a memoir of nineteen pages at the previous session. On that process, I reflected my life leading to the present situation. A memoir is a typical work of remembering self! A few months later, I noticed that I had written about the poverty of my family and of my life without using a word “poor”. Afterwards, I had chances to talk with my wife and my children while  travelling in Canada in August about moving to the apartment near UBC in September in order to completely change my way of life. I have spent time much freer than before. I have enjoyed doing my favorite things much more than before. I think I am living the happiest life now!