Three weeks ago, when we had just started quarantining the US at home, I decided to take a free course offered by Yale University on “The Science of Well-Being“. It came up in my Facebook feed on a friend’s post, and I thought, “why not?” I mean, it’s not exactly the pinnacle of my social calendar at the moment. That, coupled with the fact that 2020 has been, by choice or by circumstance, a year of looking inward, I thought this would be a nice complement to this work.

In one of the lectures in week 3, they discuss a concept called hedonic adaptation, or hedonic treadmill. Basically, the idea is that there will be many circumstances in your life that are extreme positives or negatives. But, as humans, we tend to revert to a relatively stable level of happiness after these events occur.

So, for example, let’s say you just landed the job of your dreams. In that instant of learning, your happiness ratchets up to the stratosphere. Fast forward to the second year in that same job, and most likely, your happiness level is closer to the level it had been prior to receiving the news (but hopefully a bit higher) than the level it achieved at the moment of learning you got the job. Sad news for all those joyful occasions in our lives, right?

But it got me thinking. This concept works for both positive and negative circumstances. Which got me pondering our current pandemic situation. I think it is fair to say that many of us are experiencing a very low level of happiness right now, especially because there is so much that is unknown:

• Am I going to get the corona virus? If I do, will I get very sick and die?
• Did/do I have the corona virus? If I do/did, have I unknowingly infected others?
• When will this end? When will be able to get back to normal

So, in the case of extreme negative feelings and circumstances, can we take solace in the notion that, at some point in the future, hedonic adaptation will allow us as humans to return to a higher level of happiness than the state we currently find ourselves in? If we have developed some good habits (and many, many, bad habits- read 20 extra pounds) could the continuation of the good habits (daily meditation, mindfulness, yoga, gratitude) raise that level of normality to a slight better than average happy when this is over? Or will the scars of this event weigh heavily on us, and reduce our “normal happy” to a substandard of what once was?

Most days I’m pretty ok. I still have my job, which has always been in a home office, so the 9-5, M-F for me hasn’t changed much. But, I’m no hero. There are days (yesterday was a doozy) where I feel completely overwhelmed by the situation, and overcome by the anxiety and paranoia of not knowing and being able to see “the enemy”. And I worry because my husband is out of work right now. And I worry that, if this continues, I may lose my job. And it’s a huge tsunami of feels. It’s paralyzing.

The good news is, if the data tell us anything, it’s that we will all recover a relative sameness to our happiness when this is behind us. Some less so than others, some more. But it demonstrates something that I have been reminded of every day during this crisis. It is the resiliency of the human spirit to want to be happy, and to “find the helpers” and “look for the good”, even in the darkest times.

What do you think?