Robert Waldinger (Omaha, 72 years old) has been in all the sauces for a couple of weeks. This psychiatrist has come to Spain to promote his book, A Good Life (Planet), highly recommended for existential knots and silly Sundays. The moment, before Sant Jordi, and the theme chosen could not have been more opportune.
What gives meaning to life.
From the way he has been making statements here and there, it is clear that Waldinger has observed in detail what goes through the heads of others, specifically the thousands of participants in a macro-study at Harvard University that he directs. I do not doubt that Waldinger is a great psychiatrist, but he surpasses himself by providing maxims worthy of some wholesale manufacturer of famous phrases. There is no more unfathomable human aspiration than happiness.
There goes his first reflection, not at all new. Money does not have happiness incorporated, but the extra quality in our lives is provided by personal relationships. Obvious. Who wants to be Elon Musk, with the displeasure that the poor man gets when his rocket explodes, Tesla’s shares plummet and he loses the first position in the list of the richest in the world…
More stimulating seems to me another idea of ​​this type from Harvard.
Happiness depends on what we lack.
Oh the desire.
We are only happy when we have what we want. And we only want what we don’t have. Thus, for example, a blind man will only be happy if he can see, and there are those who only fall in love with someone who does laundry in another house… Our psychiatrist must have read Schopenhauer. Look at what the philosopher wrote centuries ago: “Life swings like a pendulum: from pain to boredom.” Pain because wanting what we don’t have makes us suffer. Boredom because, once we have it, we no longer want it.
And Waldinger’s third: Happiness comes after 60. According to him, age makes us emotionally wiser, ergo, we are calmer and happier. There is a film by Sorrentino, ‘La gran belleza’ (2013), in which its protagonist releases another famous phrase, that of “the most consistent discovery I have made after turning 65 is that I cannot waste time doing things that I do not want to do”.
The ‘taitantos’ is age, and the commitments one acquires with it, which not only forces us to waste time doing things we don’t want to do, but also not to consider it a waste of time at all. Thus, sportingly, life is wasted when we should rush it to the maximum, Waldinger warns us.
Either way, we would do well to downplay this whole happiness thing and instead put a little more frivolity into it. And from phrase to famous phrase to another that is not but that is worth us to keep pulling. “There are more important things in life than your hair, but it’s a good place to start.” I read it on the label of the shampoo bottle while taking a shower and oh how comforting the hot water is.
