Are you happy?

Are you happy?

Take a moment and think about it. If it’s taking you more than 60 seconds to answer this question, then I’m guessing the answer is no. But how many times do we ever stop to ask ourselves this question?

In the Duke bubble, we rush from classes to our extracurricular meetings, to our work-study jobs and then to our volunteer meetings. After all that is done and it’s 10 p.m., we hole up in the library for hours on end writing papers, finishing problems sets and studying for tests. In the few free moments we do we have, we schedule in social activity, making sure that we’re spending the requisite number of hours with our friends. But how much of what we actually do makes us happy?

The National Opinion Research Center’s General Social Survey has been asking men and women since 1972 one simple question: How happy are you? They ask respondents to judge this on a scale of one to three, with three being very happy and one being not so happy. It is a representative survey of both women and men of differing socioeconomic statuses, educational attainment and marital statuses. The survey has discovered that not only are women less happy then men, but their happiness levels have declined over the years. These results are even harder to understand when one places them in historical context.

Ostensibly, women seem to be doing better, or at least better than they were in the 1970s when feminism was a serious movement and not a faintly derogatory word. Back then, women were fighting for equal status and the ability to do the same things as their male counterparts. In 2009, many would say that women have achieved this goal. A couple years ago, Nancy Pelosi became the first female speaker of the House, and last year we saw the first viable female presidential candidate. Women have also managed to knock down barriers in the job market; for example, four out of the eight Ivy League universities have female presidents. Women are even excelling in the educational field; in 2008, women earned 59 percent of all bachelor’s degrees and 61 percent of all master’s degrees.

So, if we women have now successfully achieved all that we set out to, why are we still so unhappy?

No one really knows. Critics argue that the survey isn’t giving clear results and that men really aren’t that much happier than women. They argue that maybe women are simply being more honest about their feelings then men. Others argue that it’s a result of women doing too much because they must juggle their careers and their roles as caretakers in the home. In the end, there is no real answer to this problem.

Personally, I believe that as a culture we are placing too much emphasis on the future and are not focusing enough on the present. I think increasingly we put our happiness on layaway and believe that even though our present activities aren’t fulfilling us or making us happy, they will in the future.