I had long suspected that I didn't know the first thing about what was good for me, and recently my cane confirmed it.
      I've had to use a cane for several years, held confidently in my left hand to support the side where the damage ocurred when I was electrocuted in an accident years ago. It seemed like the natural way to use the darn thing. But the doctors who are guiding me through a physical therapy regimen pointed out that my intuition was completely wrong.
      I was crippling myself, they said. Then they found that the medicines I was using were cancelling each other out and were counterproductive. They properly diagnosed my problem for the first time. They told me that even though I was in pain, I needed to force myself to walk. Now, after being bedridden for many months, I'm out walking the dog in the mornings.
      It all reminded me that we are powerless to know what is best for ourselves.
      The New York Times recently published a report on some research by Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, that undermines the fundamental human assumption that we can achieve happiness by making the right choices.
      You know the cliche of the sociologist shaking his head over the troubled youth: "Setting fire to the school was only the latest in a series of 'poor life choices' for little Timmy."
      Well, Timmy is us.
      Gilbert says we are most likely wrong when it comes to predicting how we will feel in the future. And then we make big and small life decisions based on these wrong predictions.
      Why study happiness? "Why study anything else?" Gilbert says. "It's the holy grail. We're studying the thing that all human action is directed toward."
      But he is finding that humans overestimate the intensity and duration of our emotional reactions to events both good and bad. On average, bad events proved to be less intense and more transient than test participants predicted, and good events less intense and briefer than expected.
      One experiment even disproved the common assumption that we would be happier if we retain an option to change our minds. Turns out we're happier with closure.
      "Our research," Gilbert reports "simply says that whether it's the thing that matters or the thing that doesn't, both of them matter less than you think they will."
      Uh, I think I know what that means, and I think it's not good.
      When any event occurs to us, we make it ordinary, the research shows. And through it becoming ordinary, we lose the pleasure we had in it.
      The crucial new information from these experiments is that people seem unable to predict that this "overestimation" will happen. Even scientists who should know better.
      For instance, we often yearn for a roomy, isolated home, Gilbert says, when in fact it will probably make us less happy by distancing us from our neighbors.
      In fact, our brains are not trying to make us happy, Gilbert and his colleagues report. Our brains are trying to get us to adapt. And that leaves us – once we adapt – always looking for something else, something to make us... happy.
      But happiness doesn't last. It can't according to this research.
      A few days after I saw the New York Times report, a story in New Scientist magazine reported that Nigeria has the highest percentage of happy people, followed by Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador and Puerto Rico.
      Nigeria? The country is divided between Christian and Muslim populations. There have been periodic outbreaks of riots and horrible violence between these groups. It is trying out democracy after a history of military rule. It's got some oil, but not that many people see the profits. In short, it should be on no one's list of happiest places.
      The survey included questions about how happy people are and how satisfied they are with their lives.
      After analysing all the data, the researchers for the World Values Survey described the desire for material goods as "a happiness suppressant."
      Blessed are the poor and the powerless? Apparently so.
      This would explain why my intuition about using my cane was dead wrong. Why my expectations about tomorrow always set me up for disappointment. Why imagining some possible good event in the future robs me of the pleasure when or if it ever arrives. Why worry is stupid. And why thinking about myself in any respect always leads to despair.
      Another article I saw told about researchers doing brain scans on Tibetan monks to find out how meditation exercises can be harnassed to increase health and happiness.
      These surveys and experiments contain a hint of what God is up to in this world. What is missing among all this data is the secret of joy.
      Joy is unrelated to happiness. It comes from a source beyond time and circumstances and resides in the person and personality of Christ.
      It is most evident in our powerlessness. It appears when we don't expect it. Joy can endure through the worst adversity but can evaporate with the merest moment of self-reflection.
      To get the "Joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart," I've got to empty my heart of every other thing.
      Joyful people, in fact, may not do too well on surveys or in experiments. Their sense of self-satisfaction in this world system might be nil. Their words and actions might generate uneasiness among their peers and downright hostility from friends still seeking mere happiness.
      The beatitudes, after all, were not a collection of "how tos" for achieving happiness, but a mind-boggling exaltation of the very conditions that we spend our lives fleeing from. Only desperate people can really hear that kind of talk.
      The truth is, we've got to give up on happiness before we can be apprehended by joy.
      I pray that God makes us desperate enough to see through the illusion.

Ole's morning bible study is available here.