What An Amusement Park Can Teach Us About Happiness
Even when we surround ourselves with reasons to be happy, we can still choose not to be happy.
I went on a road trip to California last week. On the agenda was a side trip to Sea World in San Diego. I hadn’t been there in a few decades so I couldn’t remember what it looked like before nor could I tell you what had changed. I mostly spent my time minding the kids, riding on rides with them, and watching the people.
As I watched the people around me, I noticed that even in an amusement park, happiness is hard work. Everything costs money. We had to walk everywhere. Sometimes we had to make potty stops. Sometimes we waited in line. Sometimes the kids wanted us to buy something for them, something that we’d have to carry, a momentary blip of happiness.
Everywhere I looked, there was an expectation of happiness. Riding rides, eating sweets, drinking sweet drinks, and being entertained by captive animals. There were plenty of reasons to be happy there. Anyone who could pay for the cost of admission had enough money to be there in the first place. So their concerns were not existential.
Being in SeaWorld is more of a quality problem than a quantity problem.
As I walked around, I kept returning to the problem that the amusement park was there to solve. Amusement parks exist to give us something fun to do, a break from the routine, some excitement, some fear. Something that we can’t do at home.
I considered riding a roller coaster myself, but just the day before, I had read about a young fellow who had fallen to his death from a roller coaster. I had talked with my wife about riding one, and she said she’d wave goodbye to me if I took one for a ride.
I think of happiness as a skill. Sure there are some stimuli that will elicit an automatic response from us. We respond almost automatically to the smell of good food, a hug, playing with kids, and discovering something new. But our experience of life is fleeting and transient. Nothing lasts.
Amusement parks remind me that even if I submerge myself in a place surrounded by reasons to be happy, I can still choose to be unhappy.
