It’s Healthier to Live a Life Full of Meaning than a Life Full of Pleasure
Originally published in Comfort Zone Newsletter: June 2014
The other research I want to tell you about is not about HSPs directly, but I think you will find it very pertinent. Often I hear HSPs question why, compared to non-HSPs, they seem to worry so much about the meaning of life, the problems in the world, and their role in alleviating these. HSPs often feel they just have to help others. Or they sacrifice in various ways in their lives more than non-HSPs seem to. HSPs can be driven to be creative whatever the cost. Why, they ask, do they seem to be denied the happily oblivious life some others seem to enjoy?
Parents of highly sensitive children have asked me the same thing. “He seems to be so upset by the suffering of others, by bullying and greed in other children, and so aware of all the consequences of the mistakes we humans are making. I know he’s trying to make sense of it all, but how can he grow up to be a happy person?”
I have sometimes responded, hopefully with proper sympathy, with the thoughts of Aristotle, who espoused in his Nicomachean Ethics that the greatest pleasure comes from “eudaimonia,” or the pleasure of doing what you are meant to do, as opposed to the other main philosophy at the time that one should pursue “hedonia,” the pleasure that comes from pure pleasure, such as good food, sexual gratification, or just relaxing in a nice place. Not that those are bad at all, but according to Aristotle, adding eudaimonia is what makes the good life.
Eudaimonia is what we feel when we are doing what we were meant to do, when we are self-actualizing, following our calling or our “bliss,” or becoming our true self. Bakers love to bake, and feel eudaimonia when they can offer others the perfect cake, but they might hate to dance. Dancers feel eudaimonia when they dance, but may not want to waste their practice time by baking.
HSPs and Eudaimonia
I have found that HSPs cannot tolerate just having a job to make money. It must have meaning. Aristotle may be right that everyone is born to follow a certain calling or vocation because of their special, unique abilities. But figuring out that calling and pursuing it appears to be far more important to HSPs.
Further, the one ability all humans have and feel good using is their greater consciousness, their greater awareness of what is going on. Animals may have some special abilities and some degree of consciousness. I do not want to slight them. But it does seem that humans have the edge here.
All this awareness does not come without a cost. Humans are aware of death, loss, danger distant in time or space, human evil, and all the rest, and HSPs are more aware than others. (See above!) Being aware of certain realities is painful, but being aware in general, well, most of us would not trade it for being less responsive to our world.
I have sometimes quoted Aristotle, who was supposedly quoting Socrates, who may or may not have asked one of his students, “Would you rather be a happy pig or an unhappy human?” We do know that John Stuart Mill said, “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.”
Who knew J.S. Mill had such a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor?
Evidence that Eudaimonia is Good for You
The study I want to tell you about was done by five researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and another two from the University of California at Los Angeles, and was published in August 2013 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). They knew that certain areas along the strands of human genetic material can act to increase or decrease the activity of the immune system and inflammatory response, depending on one’s behavior and feelings. Decreased immunity and increased inflammation are not healthy.
These researchers asked normal, healthy people about how happy they were generally, and how much that week they were feeling “happy?” “Satisfied?” These questions were about hedonia. And also how much that week their life had a “sense of direction or meaning?” How much they had had “experiences that challenged them to grow or become a better person?” How much they felt they “had something to contribute to society?” All these questions were aimed to capture eudaimonia. They also tested their participants for these immune system and inflammatory responses that they thought might vary with the kinds of happiness people experienced.
The study found that eudaimonia was associated with the healthy response by this genetic material, while hedonia actually was linked to the unhealthy response for some reason. Of course most people had lots of both kinds of happiness. Also as far as their conscious emotional reports of happiness, there was no difference – apparently the conscious mind does not notice the difference or the effect on health. But the body seems to know the difference between these two sources of happiness. I have always had the private, unscientific hunch that every cell in our body knows every thought we have, and that people live longer when their body is receiving the message that there’s a reason to be living. Maybe this study suggests I have been partly right.
Why these apparent differences in the effects of the two kinds of happiness? It may be that the evolutionary process of selecting the DNA that will survive to be passed on to the next generation has supported living a meaningful life, which usually means making a significant contribution to one’s culture, whether through one’s close relationships, one’s intellectual or artistic or spiritual life, or whatever. Of course, one of the most built-in, instinctive ways to live a meaningful life is to have children. And child rearing is certainly not always pure joy! One look at parents sharing an airplane seat with their tantruming toddler, the kind that screams from coast to coast, and you wonder why the single people on the plane would ever choose to have children. Yet most of them will.
The point, obviously, for HSPs, is that we seem far more prone to fill our lives with eudaimonia. Interestingly in the study, only 22% had that kind of meaning-based happiness predominating in their lives. Does that percentage sound familiar? Need I say more? “Live long and prosper.” That is, live a meaningful life.
Agreed. But pursuing work that inspires often comes at a cost of poverty. A potential life plan for an adult might include: (i) earn/save some money, (ii) Have family. (iiI) in your 50’s pursue a career/interests/hobbies that have meaning.
In a capitalist society it is often true. Check out 80,000 hours. They list jobs aimed at social and environmental betterment.
Thanks for sharing this! I am an HSP and I feel really hard to make a choice of jobs. An meaningful happy work usually tiring, complex and busy, which usually makes HSPs painful and stressed. And a happy pig life or an easier job is usually less meaningful and less achievements (e.g. wealth and social status). Which kind of job will be more suitable for me?
Thank you for this deeply helpful article and highlighting this research. These are questions that I have had my whole life. And yes, the concern for others: I was breaking up “boy fights” in the 2nd grade!
We make a difference by our choices: though we may never know how our efforts have landed on others, we can remember this research and soak up the idea that we have given at least one person a lift!
Thanks for this article, i now feel less ashamed of myself on my natural tendency to not seek hedonistic pleasures..and my self doubts on my painful constitution as an HSP
Soy PAS y después de muchos años de pasarla mal por no saber la causa de mi forma de ser y actuar, ahora me siento feliz de haber encontrado las respuestas.
Mi trabajo siempre me ha gustado porque me he dedicado a lo que nos gusta hacer a las PAS, ayudar a otras personas a encontrar sentido a su vida. Además de que me gusta escribir y hacer mis podcast de ayuda. Todo esto llena mi vida de sentido, pero a pesar de eso, el miedo al por venir me tenia estresada, tanto que me llevo a estar muy enferma, asi que ahora estoy retomando mi vida y mis emociones para gestionarlas con mas reflexión. Creo que la capacidad de reflexión de los PAS nos ayuda a tener vidas mas felices y sanas.
Oddly, as a HSP whose mind is on overdrive, I wish to be the happy pig. I’d rather be raised like a pig for slaughter than spend the rest of my life anticipating the slaughter.
Sometimes I question reality too much to the point I wonder if I’m going insane. Because no one can possibly understand how it feels to live in a different spectrum of reality, to have a bird’s eye view of life and yet wallowing beneath everyone else.
If life is just a small window for us to shine and consciousness is a test for our morality, this perfectly explains why my mind is on constant overdrive. As a kid, I have always been the wrung-out sponge subconsciously absorbing emotions. My soul grieved for the death of every insect or pest, lamented for the loss of the strangers on the streets, and screamed in pain for every student whose esteem was crippled by the wrath of oppressive teachers. As a quiet observer of life, I have always empathised with the underdogs and even the most psychopathic villains of fiction and reality. To me, every antagonist has a past bigger than themselves and motivations as driving forces of their cruel motivations.
I have never understood how people could live and thrive and yet be okay—trapped within a failing society constructed by our very own kind. Everything topples the foundation of my perception of reality. I have always been a life-long sufferer of anxiety—whether conscious or subconscious. I am a falling body of atoms, plummeting towards the bottom of the Grand Canyon, as I slip through the cracks of the education system. I cannot understand how my peers study without understanding, which is the sole reason of my slow processing speed (other than chronic maladaptive perfection).
My experiences with existential anxiety and crippling anxiety disorders have moulded me into the person I am today. Venomously speaking, I am grateful for all those tormenters of my past—the monsters who promised to exorcise this witch here. They have taught me what vengeance means and left my stripped out my former shell, such that I learnt how to let it go and to build fortresses around me.
Life is so much more than this. How can one come into existence, only to thrive in the world of productivity and extroversion? Never contemplate about the meaning of life? Be shot down with bullets of an equally hypothetical society?
All the world’s problems crush me. My soul is weeping for all the underprivileged suffering from world hunger, victims of fragile mental states and the survivors of war torn zones. The world will eventually pay for the price humanity has come to. I take it upon my shoulders to FIX because everything has room for improvement. In fact, this has been my life ambition—to right the wrongs of a cruel and merciless world. Every spirit has a story to be told. Not everyone can sustain on established systems of our flawed society.
Long story short: My soul weeps for the cruelties and acts of violence prevalent today, namely for the wrath of humanity (but being a misanthropist doesn’t help). Meaning-making is nearly impossible considering how society has forced us into moulds. I’d actually puke at the lack of individuality. It saddens me so much how we could be using our humanity for good. Yet here we are stuck in an education system, slowly wearing ourselves into an exhausted state. We have to be out there, to help them. But then again, who am I to say this, as a dreamer and thinker? I can’t even lift a finger to ask for help on a daily basis. I dream excessively about the idealised version of everything in my life. I’ve tried a dozen times to take practicality seriously, but failed millions more times. Nothing works.
PS I actually just wish for meaningful conversations. I am so sick of feigning indifference towards loud and noises people and bright places. I’m done pretending to be interested in shallow discussion and gossips and trends. I just long for the forest and animals and someone who understands me enough. That’s actually good enough if I can’t make world peace a reality.
(I am trying SO HARD to type in plain English and not load a bunch of metaphors onto this platform, but it’s clearly failing—just like my life purpose and fulfilling my version of meaning.)