Quality of Life

How to Be Happy In Missoula

By The Insider, 8-06-09

	Flickr photo by Sean Wolf.

Okay, I know you didn’t click on this title because you expected me to actually reveal the secret to happiness in a 500-word blog. So let’s just begin with the obvious –- how the heck should I know? But…in my continuing quest to question everything, this subject deserves tackling, don’t you think? (To be realistic, maybe I should have subtitled this “part one of a 1,000-part series.”)

Let’s start with the “in Missoula” part. We love our little town and most of us can tell you a hundred reasons why. Great local music, lots of parks, river trails, bike paths, some pretty great food joints, not too crowded (well, unless you’re downtown on a summer Saturday morning, but hey, it’s only once a week and I kinda like it), traffic’s not too bad (ok, ok, Reserve street, but seriously, when rush-hour lasts literally an hour, are we really going to complain?), schools are pretty good, crime’s pretty low. Need I go on?

What we’ve just been doing, however, is applying some pretty universal “quality of life” measures to quantify happiness, or at least the conditions conducive to it. Are people really happier in idyllic little towns like ours? The answer, of course, is “it all depends.”

Happiness researchers call themselves “quality of life” scientists. They’re mostly in the psychology field, and they try to measure happiness. “What does happiness depend on?” they want to know. The problem with trying to measure happiness, they readily admit, is that it’s so subjective. One person might call Missoula “idyllic” while another sees it as suffocating, or lacking opportunity or depressing or whatever. It may even be seasonal. Ask people how happy they are in June, before fire season, then ask them again in February when the dreaded inversion hovers. It’s almost always circumstantial. If things are going well, most people would say they’re happy. If not, they’re not.

It’s also comparative. “Happy compared to what?” we might ask. Two people might have exactly the same income. One is satisfied, the other not. One person might have had some pretty crappy life circumstances in the past and things are better now, so they’re happier than someone who’s had it pretty good and things have taken a dive.

My main question is this: how can we find deep, lasting happiness that doesn’t depend on outside circumstances? If you’ve lived more than a decade or two, you know that the only constant is change. As soon as you get your ducks in a row, they fly off. Get that perfect job, perfect mate, perfect whatever, and the whatever eventually hits the fan, one way or another. Is your happiness dependent on relationships? Well, people are fickle, prone to stuff like dying, getting sick, moving away.

How about stuff? Stuff can go away in a fire, a flood, a stock-market crash, you name it. Your job, your friends, your bank account, your family…none of these things are permanent, and although they are often precious, it is that very preciousness that can be most conducive to our unhappiness.

So, how to be happy in Missoula? My default answer is, of course, that I don’t know…but I have some ideas. Stay tuned.

Peace

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