What Makes Women Happy?

I came across a post by Greg Mankiw linked to a study by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers a couple weeks back but didn't have time to post...probably sent it out as a "tweet."

The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness
By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women's happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women's declining relative well-being is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well-being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging -- one with higher subjective well-being for men.

To me, it doesn't seem that surprising that a study would show worldly success doesn't always bring substantive happiness along with it. Even if in life, we do along with the lie.

While this study may shows that the feminists were wrong to suggest that women could find true happiness if they achieved the same success in the workforce as men, I don't think that men achieve happiness and fulfillment through material successes any more or less than women do.

Thoughts?

How do you want your story to end?

In her song Sober, Pink asks "How can I feel this good sober?"

There are so many things and people we use in this world to feel "so high" that "nothing can touch us," but leave us wondering if it's possible to feel this "high" without the consequences: "the party's over." She, like most of us, often feel "broken down in agony just tryna find a fit"--even at high costs to our self-worth.

Those things and people we've used for "protection" will always leave us feeling empty. At some point, we will start "coming down, coming down, coming down" and "spinning ’round, spinning ’round, spinning ’round" struggling to find our fit in a reality in which a continual high isn't possible.

Pink, in this song, exposes the temporary nature of the things and people she uses and regrets these short-lived attempts to feel good: "I have heard myself cry, never again."

She acknowledges that she's "the only one to blame" because she listens to the "whispers" she knows to be a lie.

She laments that she doesn't want to stay stuck in a lifestyle of perpetual highs and lows; good intentions and lack of follow through; new resolutions and old regrets: "That’s not the way I want my story to end."

Are you living a life that will lead you to how you want your story to end?

What will the legacy of your life on earth be?

What things or people do you need to get out of your life to get out of a cycle of artificial highs and lows?

Pink - Sober Lyrics - ALL

Refrain
I’m safe Up high
Nothing can touch me
But why do I feel this party’s over?
No pain Inside
You’re like perfection
How do I feel this good sober

No Pain Inside
Nothing can touch me
But why do I feel this party’s over?
No pain
Inside
You’re like perfection
How do I feel this good sober?

Will I ever feel this good sober?
Tell me, No no no no no pain
How do i feel this good sober?

The Invisible

"Try, moreover, to turn your heart from the love of things visible and bring yourself to things invisible. For they who follow their own evil passions stain their consciences and lose the grace of God." Thomas a Kempis, Imitation of Christ

All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing." Ecclesiastes 1:8

We try so hard to substitute the invisible with the visible, but the more we seek to satisfy our longings with those things close at hand, the less our senses desire that which will truly fill us to the full.