Does avoiding misery make you happy?
It might seem like self-preservation, but the results aren’t necessarily what you’d expect
In Dr Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham, the relentlessly upbeat Sam-I-Am spends the entire book badgering a grouchy, nameless narrator into tasting the eponymous dish. He cycles through one inventive but futile pitch after another – in a house, with a mouse, in a box, with a fox, on a train, in the rain – until the narrator, caving just to get some peace, tastes the dish and discovers he loves it. When my son was growing up, “Green Eggs and Ham” was my shorthand for telling him he was avoiding something he’d love if he only tried it.
Of course, not every experience we fear or dread turns out to be a delicious surprise. Misery is an inescapable part of the human condition. We can’t avoid it, yet people try their hardest anyway. We cling to hope even when a situation is hopeless. We push painful thoughts out of mind rather than confront them. We struggle to control things that cannot be changed. And we go to sometimes self-destructive lengths to protect our pride from even the tiniest pinprick. These strategies may sometimes spare us pain in the moment. But while they are intended to promote (or at least preserve) our happiness, over time they have the perverse result of making us much more miserable.
