Most people if asked whether their life was good overall would instinctively answer "Yes!", but what I'm wondering is.. how do they know? When you are looking back at the life you've lived, you're not looking at a complete record of all your experiences. Most of your day-to-day experience is very quickly forgotten (what did you have for lunch two weeks ago on a Tuesday?) and that which isn't can quickly morph in your mind until it includes more fiction than facts. You can literally implant false memories into regular people through the power of suggestion, making them remember the details of an event that never happened. You can also change your memory of a specific event through proper therapy (practiced on PTSD patients, for example). In those cases the memory change is deliberate, but it also happens naturally for all of us all the time. Every time you recall something, you do it slightly differently than you did the last time. This is a big reason why the witness testimony is famously so unreliable.
Still, even if your memories are incomplete and not fully accurate, you can still have a pretty good guess as to what your life is like overall, right? Well, maybe it would be the case if what you remember was random, but it isn't. The more often you revisit a memory, the more it solidifies in your brain. If you're inclined to think of the 'good times' more than the 'bad times', you will remember the ones you think of most often.
Finally, though it may sound surprising, we aren't capable of judging our pain objectively even in a short term. Our brain focuses most on the peak of the experience (e.g. when the pain is most intense) and on how it ended rather than the overall suffering. In 1993 they made a study where participants had to endure pain by holding their hand in cold water (around 14 degrees Celsius or 57 Fahrenheit) for a specific duration of time. In the first trial (A), the participants had to hold their hand in that cold water for exactly 60 seconds. In the second trial (B), they did the same thing, but added an additional 30 seconds of submersion while secretly raising the temperature by 1 degree Celsius (which is slightly warmer but still painful). After that, they had to choose which condition they would like to experience for the last trial, A or B. Around 80% of the participants chose to endure trial B despite it objectively being more painful. The reduced suffering at the end made it seem like the experience was less painful overall.
At the same time, we know from psychology that people are more sensitive to pain than they are to pleasure. I won't bore you with details, but consider how you would feel about winning $100 vs losing the same amount. Or, alternatively, what if you won $100 and then lost it - would you feel neutral after that?
Finally, I want to bring up hedonic adaptation. Basically, this is the tendency of your brain to 'adjust' your personal experience towards a certain baseline. When people win the lottery, for example, they report being much happier for a bit, but they soon get used to it and go back to their normal 'default' level of happiness. Same works in the opposite direction, but not in the same way. You still get used to the new baseline, but it takes much longer to adjust.
I could continue, but those are my main reasons for questioning whether life often is, or even can, be enjoyable overall. Things I brought up in this post aren't based on personal experience - those findings are a result of real psychological studies. Still, I should say that I don't have any formal education in this area and might be biased towards the more pessimistic findings and interpretations. Because of that, I really want to hear what do think. Does what I'm saying make any sense or did I finally loose my mind? Please, let me know!
Still, even if your memories are incomplete and not fully accurate, you can still have a pretty good guess as to what your life is like overall, right? Well, maybe it would be the case if what you remember was random, but it isn't. The more often you revisit a memory, the more it solidifies in your brain. If you're inclined to think of the 'good times' more than the 'bad times', you will remember the ones you think of most often.
Finally, though it may sound surprising, we aren't capable of judging our pain objectively even in a short term. Our brain focuses most on the peak of the experience (e.g. when the pain is most intense) and on how it ended rather than the overall suffering. In 1993 they made a study where participants had to endure pain by holding their hand in cold water (around 14 degrees Celsius or 57 Fahrenheit) for a specific duration of time. In the first trial (A), the participants had to hold their hand in that cold water for exactly 60 seconds. In the second trial (B), they did the same thing, but added an additional 30 seconds of submersion while secretly raising the temperature by 1 degree Celsius (which is slightly warmer but still painful). After that, they had to choose which condition they would like to experience for the last trial, A or B. Around 80% of the participants chose to endure trial B despite it objectively being more painful. The reduced suffering at the end made it seem like the experience was less painful overall.
At the same time, we know from psychology that people are more sensitive to pain than they are to pleasure. I won't bore you with details, but consider how you would feel about winning $100 vs losing the same amount. Or, alternatively, what if you won $100 and then lost it - would you feel neutral after that?
Finally, I want to bring up hedonic adaptation. Basically, this is the tendency of your brain to 'adjust' your personal experience towards a certain baseline. When people win the lottery, for example, they report being much happier for a bit, but they soon get used to it and go back to their normal 'default' level of happiness. Same works in the opposite direction, but not in the same way. You still get used to the new baseline, but it takes much longer to adjust.
I could continue, but those are my main reasons for questioning whether life often is, or even can, be enjoyable overall. Things I brought up in this post aren't based on personal experience - those findings are a result of real psychological studies. Still, I should say that I don't have any formal education in this area and might be biased towards the more pessimistic findings and interpretations. Because of that, I really want to hear what do think. Does what I'm saying make any sense or did I finally loose my mind? Please, let me know!
