SMILE, ONTARIO EXCLUSIVE POLL SHOWS WE’RE A VERY HAPPY, HOPEFUL BUNCH
Kindness is the value we prize most, Forum survey shows, and we’re shrugging off concerns about the economy, increasingly turning our thoughts to home and family
“Happiness, whatever else people may say, is the great concern of our life.”
Since at least the time of Aristotle, the desire for happiness — a state of mind characterized by contentment, satisfaction, pleasure or joy — has been deemed the central driver of human conduct.
As 2016 dawns, a Forum Research poll commissioned by the Star suggests 63 per cent of Ontario adults are extremely or very happy with their lives. Only nine per cent are unhappy with their lot, and a mere two per cent aren’t happy at all.
That’s an impressive degree of contentment in times of economic uncertainty, stagnant wages, precarious employment, a shrinking middle class, global upheaval and climate change.
Forum president Lorne Bozinoff said the poll, which surveyed 1,001people and is considered accurate to within three percentage points 19 times in 20, suggests Ontarians are increasingly finding contentment in activities centred on home and family.
That is certainly the case for Melanie and Ericson Santos. The married couple grin from ear to ear when they take turns holding their 8-month-old son, Liam.
Melanie came to Toronto from the Philippines six years ago to work as a caregiver and had to leave Ericson and their daughter behind. She went home once a year but last spring the family was finally reunited in Canada.
Even though Ericson has vision problems that have forced him to stop working, the pair is overjoyed the family is whole again.
“We’re together, even though there’s ups and downs,” Melanie said. “What we have right now, that’s more than enough.”
The time-honoured recipe for happiness seems to involve a rough balance of meaningful work, love and play. About two-thirds (64 per cent) were satisfied with their job security, 62 per cent were happy with their sex lives, and the same percentage was happy with their work-life balance.
Overall, the trend line is consistent with rising levels of life satisfaction across Canada over the last decade. This could be explained, in part, by the fact research shows adults grow steadily happier as they move through middle age — as the baby boomers(who haven’t had a ton to be unhappy about during their lifetimes) continue to do.
The list of what creates happiness usually includes love, family, peace of mind, purpose, good times with friends, travel, virtue, service, beauty and truth.
Research increasingly shows that education, climate, race and gender do not have a major effect on longterm happiness. Neither does wealth, once basic material needs have been met. Even if circumstances change, people tend to adapt and happiness levels revert to a personal “set-point.”
The happiness formula, such as one exists, was hinted at in the values that respondents told Forum they most hope to instill in their children. Kindness was the most prized value, followed by work ethic, ambition, leadership, curiosity, courage and teamwork.
In that list is apparent endorsement of what Viktor Frankl argued in his classic Man’s Search for Meaning. Happiness “cannot be pursued,” he wrote. “It must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than one’s self.”
The good news about the prevailing happiness in Ontario is that moods tend to be contagious, as the Dalai Lama, among others, knows. “My happiness depends on others’ happiness,” he wrote. “So when I see happy people, automatically I also feel a little bit happier than when I see people in a difficult situation.”
The bad news is that recent research suggests mere mortals are not very good at accurately reporting our emotional state or at predicting what is likely to make us happy. In his best-selling Stumbling on Happiness, Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert said that owing to our neurology we get a startling amount wrong.
On the one hand, because of optimism bias and something called the “Hedonic treadmill,” the new and bigger house, car, spouse soon becomes the norm and doesn’t provide the lift we initially imagined.
On the other, our own errant forecasting sometimes plays to our ad- vantage. We’re far more resilient than we often think and are able to cope, relatively contentedly, with events and challenges we imagine would demolish us.
Earlier this year, the World Happiness Report listed Canada as the fifth happiest country in the world. It may be that the recent change in government improved our mood even more. Research shows that people who participate in political activities such as voting are happier than those who don’t.
Whatever the government, it would be wise to make a priority of employment. Nothing is quite so likely to thwart happiness, it turns out, as job loss. This ranks with divorce and separation among downers, followed by chronic pain, depression and sleep disorders.
The realm of happiness research is full of surprises. According to Statistics Canada, Sudbury — once considered a reasonable facsimile of the moon — was ranked the happiest community in Canada in 2015, while Vancouver — for all its natural blessings — was the unhappiest.
Still, if men and women aspire above all to happiness, we do seem perennially intrigued — and frequently inspired, when it comes to art — by its opposites.
Frank McCourt said in Angela’s Ashes, a chronicle of his impoverished Irish youth, that “the happy childhood is hardly worth your while.” Leo Tolstoy famously opened Anna Karenina with the observation that all happy families are monotonously alike, but, perking up, “each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
And let’s face it. Anguish gets you something soul-stirring, like Adele. Happy gets you Pharrell Williams.
The Forum survey was conducted Nov. 27 to Dec. 2 by interactive voice response. Some data have been statistically weighted by age, region and other variables to ensure the sample reflects the actual population as reflected in census data. Poll results are housed in the data library of the University of Toronto political science department.