When mind wanders, happiness departs

I used to work with a highly creative and socially conscious guy who told me once that he was always thinking about something.

Driving his car, brushing his teeth, eating his dinner -- most of the time his mind was occupied in pondering how to make the world better while his body was doing something else.

This probably made him more productive, but not more happy. Such is the conclusion of research I came across today in the New York Times: "When the Mind Wanders, Happiness Also Strays."

Whatever people were doing, whether it was having sex or reading or shopping, they tended to be happier if they focused on the activity instead of thinking about something else. In fact, whether and where their minds wandered was a better predictor of happiness than what they were doing.

Well, this is pretty much what the Buddha taught several thousand years ago, along with countless other more modern yogis, sages, gurus, and meditation teachers. Indeed, a Boston reporter says her yoga instructor was right on top of this research, mentioning it in class.

If you want to be part of this ongoing study, and have an iPhone, head over to TrackYourHappiness.org and sign up to get an email or text message at random moments that asks you to report your happiness at the moment.

The NY Times story says:

When asked to rate their feelings on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being “very good,” the people having sex gave an average rating of 90. That was a good 15 points higher than the next-best activity, exercising, which was followed closely by conversation, listening to music, taking a walk, eating, praying and meditating, cooking, shopping, taking care of one’s children and reading. Near the bottom of the list were personal grooming, commuting and working.

I suspect, though, that one of the activities wasn't "being bothered by my iPhone when I'm having sex or otherwise happily engaged." But hey, advancing science comes with some costs.

Like most people, my mind is notoriously prone to wandering. I suppose it shouldn't, since I've meditated almost every day since I was twenty years old (I'm now much older and not much wiser at sixty-two).

I do find that concentrating on a mantra or my breath for 20-30 minutes starts off my morning in a focused manner. I enjoy not thinking much, or at all, about other stuff while I'm doing a single thing.

When I get going on my other activities of the day, I often backslide into what is called "monkey mind," internal chattering from lots of psychological tree tops that isn't related to what I'm actually doing.

This afternoon, though, inspired by the wandering mind = less happy research, I did better while grocery shopping. I consciously focused on each step I took from the parking lot into the south Salem Fred Meyer store.

Then I had a sense of slowing down, selecting one item at a time, being mindful of the details of choosing bananas, checking the expiration date on organic lettuce mix, finding an unfamiliar brand of hair conditioner that my wife had put on the list.

I really did feel happier shopping in this fashion. It struck me that external reality is considerably more interesting, by and large, than my thoughts -- which tend to be repetitive.

After loading the groceries into the back of our Hybrid Highlander and starting to drive off to the next shopping stop, I got another lesson in the value of mindfulness.

Still engaged in focusing on external reality, rather than my own mind, I saw a gorgeous young woman -- willowy, shapely, graceful -- walking through the parking lot. If I'd been zeroed in on what my psyche was chattering about, instead of what was sensuously present in the outside world, I could have missed her.

The research findings seem pretty obvious. But often we miss the obvious in our searching for happiness.

"Unlike other animals, human beings spend a lot of time thinking about what is not going on around them, contemplating events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or will never happen at all," the authors of the study, Harvard doctoral student Matthew Killingsworth and psychology professor Daniel Gilbert, write in the new paper. And that unique ability, they found, does not make for a happier species.

A few years ago I wrote a blog post with one of my favorite titles: "Chipmunk stalking, Kentucky TV, and Benzedrine." The theme was focus -- whether canine, fire-watching, or drug-aided. I ended with some thoughts that are echoed by the recent research.

Focus. Concentration. Being in the moment, no matter how much or how little is happening.

Why is this so easy for dogs and chipmunks? And for people in altered states of consciousness, like when they're sitting around a fire on a warm summer night? Or hosing cannery pulp into drains under the influence of a post-midnight Benzedrine?

Those little white amphetamine-filled pills were what got me through an otherwise shitty job at a San Jose cannery during one of my college summers.

My night shift was cleanly divided into two halves: unhappy and happy, the demarcation being when, after a "lunch" break at 3 am or so, I'd pop a bennie into my mouth.

Ah, what a difference some amphetamine would make! Sometimes my job would be to put on a rain suit, stand under the conveyor belts on which fruit pulp was dripping, and use a high pressure hose to direct the pulp into drains.

I hated the job pre-Benzedrine. Afterwards, I loved it. It was endlessly fascinating to train the water just so, artfully directing the spray to maximum pulp-washing effect. (Others, like W.H. Auden, have applied Benzedrine toward more creative pursuits.)

I'd also use Benzedrine as a study aid for sleep-inducing classes like Statistics. I remember preparing for a test where I could have read about T-tests all night, the normal curve and levels of significance being so astoundingly interesting.

Just like inching your way toward a chipmunk for almost an hour and a half can be, if you're a prey-obsessed canine. Or like watching an outdoor fire can be, if you're with pleasant company (which can be only yourself), the air is warm, and the stars are bright.

Simple pleasures, drug aided or not, often are the most satisfying. Frequently we forget this in our quest for the next exciting thing, as we're multi-entertaining our way through the day and night.