What is the secret to happiness? How do we mere mortals achieve it? Is it even possible to find happiness amid the daily demands of our crazy lives? Paula Poundstone, the Emmy Award-winning stand-up comic and professional Doubting Thomas, was determined to find out. One by one she immersed herself in a series of experiments that she hoped would reveal the path to getting happy. Now she presents to all the world her findings in her wildly funny and strikingly wise new book, THE TOTALLY UNSCIENTIFIC STUDY OF THE SEARCH FOR HUMAN HAPPINESS.
“Happiness is the trickiest of all emotions,” Paula posits. “It is elusive. If you crack an egg into a bowl and small bit of eggshell gets in there, it slips away at every approach of your finger, but it you don’t bother looking for it and just cook it up, you’re likely to chomp down on it without even trying. Happiness is like a rogue piece of eggshell, I bet.” Still, determined to take a more proactive approach to finding happiness—while exerting her constitutionally-granted right to pursue it—Paula sets out on her quest through a series of potentially life-altering experiments.
Hearing that the key to happiness is being physically fit, Paula tries taekwondo (“I have lost twelve pounds, but I have a bad feeling that my fat has a highly developed homing instinct.”). Pushing against her Luddite tendencies, she embraces technology (“I hate auto-correct. I don’t need a machine correcting me. I have two teenage daughters.”) but discovers it’s hard to unplug once she has plugged in and decides that you can miss too much real life while messing around with tech stuff. While taking her daughter camping, the two find some delights, despite a middle-of-the-night encounter with a bear (“It’s good not to be eaten”).
Like many of us, Paula is sure that getting organized is the answer and she throws herself into the task not once, but twice (“It’s the ‘staying organized’ that’s the kicker.”). Hoping to reconnect with her kids, the family embarks on an all-day home movie marathon. Later, when the kids are out of the house Paula spends some quality time with her dogs and cats. She tries a New Age route, opening up her mind to inner peace (“Outer peace would be nice, too.”) and becoming warm and fuzzy with everyone she meets (“TSA agents hate hugging.”). Paula experiences some of her greatest pleasure when she takes up swing dancing and when she volunteers at a local nursing home.
Throughout her search, Paula brings readers inside her unashamedly imperfect life, as she juggles the needs of three sometimes-not-so-cooperative kids whom she adores despite the challenges (“Parenting is a lot harder than I ever thought it would be, whether your desk is clean or not.”). Nevertheless, she persists! The payoff of Paula’s dogged quest for the secret to happiness is that she discovers much about herself and reaches some profound conclusions: “There is joy to be found in the world,” Paula observes, “even without the possibility of playing the oboe.”
And for readers the payoff is that Paula Poundstone has given us a dose of happiness with her hilarious new book.