Many Americans like to point out that our nation was founded on powerful claims about the self-evident truth of humanity’s unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Phrased that way, happiness isn’t a sure thing, but it’s definitely something you deserve an opportunity to find. It’s also frequently construed as an individual good. Yes, American history is full of groups of people who’ve carved out space to follow particular patterns of communal life, but the cultural and legal bias is always towards the ability of the individual to decide what habits and goods are worth pursuit.
Photo credit: Flickr / Mike McSharry
A recent New York Times article caught my attention for the way it highlighted this tension. In “You Don’t Need More Free Time” sociology professor Cristobal Young lays out the results of his recent research on work-life balance. As it turns out, more free time makes you happier only if the people you care about – your family and friends – can enjoy that free time with you. People are happiest on weekends precisely because so many people celebrate them at the same time; they’re a network good.
The article is in many ways a follow-up to/expansion on Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. The landmark book, published at the turn of the twenty-first century, provides deep evidence that Americans’ pursuit of individual happiness is in fact not making us happier. Most of the things that make us happy are based on strong social capital – a system of network goods.
The idea that happiness fully blooms only in relationship is also a biblical idea. The injunction that “where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them” applies not only to weekly communal worship but to patterns of daily life built on connecting with others. The ability to meet for bowling on Tuesday, happy hour on Friday, or a play date on Saturday are just as important when it comes to living a happy, joyful life.
It seems to me that young adults are particularly susceptible to threats to happiness posed by disjunction in free time availability. While no age demographic is perfectly homogenous, young adults face a barrage of transitions they will no longer navigate precisely with their age cohort (their predominant experience thus far). Education and vocational choices, romantic relationships, household location and formation, parenthood…those transitions can come with the freedom to pursue previously unavailable routes to happiness. However, young adults often also find they are suddenly out of sync with those closest to them when it comes to spending their free time and money, with no clear indication when things might sync up again.
While the prescription for happiness is in some ways relatively simple – cultivate meaningful relationships with God and others – the doing of it is much more difficult. A network good is only as good as the people in your network. What are you doing to strengthen your network? What creative ways have you found, both personally and in the life of your church, to help people sync up and enjoy time together?
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