“We think of our future as anticipated memories…”

I really love this video because Dr.

 Kahneman is able to clearly elucidate some things that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately- what is happy? and a corollary question, what is fun?

When someone asks me “are you happy?” or “did you have fun?”, I am sometimes at a loss for words, (not just cause sometimes I’m overly pedantic) but Kahneman’s talk brought to light this dichotomy of experience that I wasn’t really able to clearly define. What does it really mean to “be happy”? What does it mean that something is “fun”? For me as least, people use these simple words for a broad spectrum of complex feelings and experiences. 

But this is not about the failing of language to express the myriad dimensions of “happy” and “fun”. But the fact that this divide exists says a lot, I think. It may reflect in the way that society suggests that some activity should necessarily be fun, or that someone who is successful should be happy, and someone who is unsuccessful is unhappy. (at the end of the video, Kahneman notes some stark economic statistics relating to happiness, but those aside- you can have money and not feel successful).

Recently I read a NYer excerpt of Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, and it made me think about his 10,000 hour people, and how they would balance their experiential and remembering selves. Personally, I feel like I’ve favored my remembering self over my experiential self. It’s conjecture, but I feel like those who put in their 10,000 hours are those who have a greater sense of their remembering selves, their anticipated memories, than someone who is not willing to do that. 

It also makes me realize that those who are rich and poor, successful and not, all have a different recipe for happiness and a different method for balancing the two selves. This seems to be some profound point about the way in which we choose to lead our lives.