“When a new American friend persuades me to try out a yoga class, you can almost smell the tension and misery in the room.” That’s Ruth Whippman in her book America the Anxious: How Our Pursuit of Happiness Is Creating a Nation of Nervous Wrecks. Filled with hilarious and often eyebrow-raising quips about everything from our approach to job satisfaction to parenting to social media, the book covers a lot of ground. But while the title implicates happiness, she really takes on all of our wellness pursuits and how they make us, frankly, crazy.
Yoga Unleashes My Inner Strength, Just Check My Instagram
Whippman is a British woman living in Los Angeles. As a self-described “cynical joy-slacking” Brit she quickly becomes intrigued by Americans’ seeming obsession with happiness. We are, she rightly observes, fixated on the happy-ever-after ending to our own lives which is, of course, perpetually just over the next hill. But the more she herself ventures onto our supposed paths to contentment, the more she feels that the whole thing backfires as often as it succeeds.
Take mindfulness meditation and yoga. Both are often billed as a way to find happiness through the cultivation of inner strength. By tuning out the chaos of the world and pulling into oneself, the practitioner can come to understand that well-being springs from within. Except the evidence seems to suggest it doesn’t. Whippman points to a plethora of research going back fifty years which says that in fact, social connection is absolutely paramount to human happiness. We’ve got to reach out, rather than look in, the studies show.
And of course, as many have pointed out, that’s exactly what we have less of than ever. Social media shows us pictures of friends, family, and people we’d like to meet—but are Facebook stalking instead—but these interactions don’t translate into real world connection. That lack of contact, the evidence suggests, is the actual source of some serious unhappiness, especially among teens. So, Whippman asks, is telling everyone to sit quietly and reflect on their own inner path to happiness (and chronicle their progress on Instagram) the best approach?
Working 90 Hours A Week And Loving It?
It is worth asking some version of this question in many areas of our approach to wellness. For example, exercise is arguably still the go-to recommendation for fighting obesity, type II diabetes, and heart disease, but should that be so? There has been a lot of attention as of late on other risk factors like chronic stress and sleep deprivation, showing that they too play a strong role in our health.
Whippman, ever the impossibly dry British critic, notes once again that on this subject Americans display a rather comical disconnect. We, she points out, have a unique obsession with work. Where else but at Apple headquarters in California, Whippman asks, would you find a shirt reading “Working 90 Hours A Week And Loving It”? Where else but in Las Vegas will you find a city literally designed to fuse work with life? How about the offices now stocked with sleeping pods, games, coffee shops, and even bars? This growing idea that work and life should somehow be one glorious existence is a uniquely American creation and, like twinkies and spam, probably not a great one for health.
Which brings us back around to the question of exercise. No one denies the importance of physical activity. However, we must ask ourselves, does dragging oneself out of bed and to a fitness class at 5:30 in the morning to be followed immediately by a twelve hour workday constitute a healthy lifestyle or a stressful one? Is it not also possible that the added physical stress on top of the sleep deprivation and frayed nerves serves only to tear the person down rather than build them back up? Perhaps, Whippman suggests, American’s would be better off if they examined policies around vacation time, maternity and paternity leave, and work hours in general instead of investing in another corporate wellness program. She, for her part, would rather just go home at a reasonable hour.
It’s What You Leave Out That Counts
One of the main points of America the Anxious is the simple message that it’s often what you don’t do that makes the biggest impact on your health. In America, we often look to fix the consequences of our actions rather than alter the behavior itself. Many of us could make huge improvements to our health by working less, unplugging from social media, and cutting a few activities out of our overcrowded calendars. With that achieved, rather than obsessing over how to become healthy and happy, we might just be it.
Interested in the book? Check out America the Anxious on Ruth Whippman’s website.