In his latest book, How To Be Perfectly Unhappy, Matthew Inman, aka The Oatmeal, ponders the concept of happiness in his usual humorous style. And it’s a pretty amusing read but short because the subject, and his conclusions, are fairly straightforward and underwhelming.
The crux of his argument centres around flawed semantics and framing: are you happy or unhappy? But why is it an either/or question to begin with – aren’t we more complex than that? Happiness to me is an undeniably and overwhelming positive emotion and unhappiness is the opposite but, like Inman, I generally don’t feel either way for long – most of the time I’m content, interested and engaged in various different things that fill my days (work, hobbies, personal stuff, etc.) that don’t elicit feelings of either happiness or unhappiness.
Inman illustrates his point with the example of Pluto being downgraded from a planet because our definition of a planet changed over time. Maybe we should start reconsidering what “happy” means? Because if the choice is happy or unhappy and we’re not punching the air euphorically with a dumb smile on our faces, does that leave us with the realisation that we’re unhappy (and thereby possibly making you unhappy)? It shouldn’t. In this moment, I’m not happy but to say I’m therefore unhappy isn’t right either. Fulfilment would be a better term particularly as a lot of us do things that are hard to achieve but we find meaning and fulfilment from the challenge even if we’re not especially “happy” in the process.
Even though How To Be Perfectly Unhappy is a short book, the material felt stretched for what it was. Nor was I very engaged as he’s not saying anything mind-blowing and it’s not as funny as his other books. That said, I agree with Inman’s views and appreciate thoughtful books like this. He puts his ideas across well and it’s got a very positive message at its heart.
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