Martin Seligman's Journey (continued)

A New Seligman Frontier: Learned Happiness
   Several months before Seligman passed on the torch of the APA presidency on New Year's Eve, I posed the de-riguer question for an American celebrity who's just come off the field from a great victory: Hey Marty, you've just helped re-focus the entire field of psychology towards a more positive and profitable direction. What are you going to do now? Go to Disney World?
   Well, close. He's going to Grand Cayman Island. Thanks to a comfy grant from the Gallup Corporation (the polling organization), he'll soon be spending several days in the company of about 20 other Nobel-laureate-level geniuses, trying to develop and articulate a "Taxonomy of the Good Life."
   The folks at Gallup are interested in being able to measure the "progress" of various nations around the world toward making the lives of their citizens better. While that may seem like a relatively simple task, it's actually astoundingly complex. The "good life," as Seligman says, is more complicated than "a Porsche, champagne, and a suntan" (although he will probably be enjoying at least two out of those three this month as he contemplates the subject on Grand Cayman Island).
   I won't hazard a guess at what Seligman and his colleagues may come up with to define specific, universal measurements of what comprises the good life. But if I had a chance to place a bet on which of these 20 geniuses would turn up the most surprising and significant components, I'd bet on Marty Seligman. When Seligman stays on an island, interesting things happen.
   On the "Big Island" of Kona, Hawaii, for example, he and Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton went out swimming one day to explore some underwater arches some distance from the rocky shoreline -- and came very close to drowning when a tropical storm blew in, transforming the quiet water into a lethal combination of crashing waves and ferocious currents.
   After listening to Seligman recount that near-disaster, I asked something genuinely stupid, along the lines of "So, what did you guys talk about as you were swimming for your lives and contemplating your imminent deaths?"
   "We actually talked about quite a few things, like how we should have taken out bigger life insurance policies," he responded, "and I remember Michael lamenting how now he'd never get to see the film version of Jurassic Park Š " Thus began a beautiful friendship.
   Seligman and Crichton were not the only bloodied, beaten-up swimmer/ writers to wash ashore on the beaches of the Big Island during the Seligmans' vacations at Kona Village. Another was Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the Hungarian-born chair of the psychology department at the University of Chicago and author of Flow, a brilliant book about how people achieve their most productive states. Two years ago, after getting caught in some strong currents, Csikszentmihalyi struggled back to the beach and was washed ashore, bleeding. A man saw him and rushed to help. It was Seligman, who only later figured out who he had just saved.
   Today, Seligman and "Mike" Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced "cheeks-send-me-high") are not only the premier progenitors of the Gallup good-life project but also co-authors of a forthcoming book that Seligman says "will have something to do with what it means to be happy."
   Asked how he's personally progressing with the challenges proposed by his daughter Nicki's anti-grouch "garden lecture," he responds:
   "For almost my entire life, until that moment with Nicki, I never viewed happiness as a primary goal. Mike views happiness as an end unto itself. I've viewed happiness as somewhat of an 'epi-phenomenon,' something that came as a kind of a byproduct generated by work well done.
   "As I've [recently] learned more about happiness, I've discovered some interesting things," Seligman continues. "I've been reading some good science [compiled recently], that strongly supports the premise that the happier you are, the more productive you are Š That's helped to motivate me."
   As Seligman launches himself this new year into compiling the thoughts and research for another groundbreaking book, exploring the measurable, scientific components of happiness and the good life, I recall what, two months ago, he confided to me was the only part he was somewhat confident about including:
   "I'm pretty sure the book will begin with the story of Nicki and me in the garden."
  

Rob Hirtz, C'80, is a writer in Durham, N.C. His books include Tales of Orp, a musical-instruction book of etudes (along with a pedagogical sci-fi comic strip), co- authored with his brother, William Gugala Hirtz, and The North Carolina Handbook, co-authored with his wife, Jenny Daughtry Hirtz, and due out in February.
   
January/February Contents | Gazette Home
Copyright 1999 The Pennsylvania Gazette Last modified 1/4/99