By now everyone in Israel has read the results of the study published
earlier this month that showed Israelis ranked among the happiest
people among the Western nations, despite an extensive laundry list of
problems in their country.
Israel
ranked low in terms of income, housing, education and security for
example—all things we would typical associate with contentment. As an
Asian-American who hails from San Francisco, I could add a few of my own
complaints to the list: lack of ethnic food, the outrageous cost of
imported goods, the raging summer heat, the marginalization of
minorities and refugees, and the famous Israeli frankness that has me
constantly fielding questions about why I pay so much for my apartment
and my (ever so subtle) fluctuation in weight (Up or down? Eating cakes
or working out?), chief among them.
So then why—if they probably can't find a job or afford the apartment that they live in—are Israelis so damn happy?
War
has quite a bit to do with it.
The fact is that Israel has been in a
perpetual state of war—or under the threat of war—since David Ben-Gurion
declared independence in May 1948, the only Western country in the
world in which this is the case.
Even
during periods of "peace," there still seems to exist, at a minimum, a
potential intifada brewing in the West Bank, or chemical weapons making
their way into the hands of Hezbollah, or rockets being lobbed into the
country from Gaza.
And
this has created a fascinating psychological paradox, one that has been
studied extensively by Professor Zahava Solomon of Tel Aviv University.
On one hand, as she told me in a recent phone interview, the culture of
conflict has made Israelis constantly aware of their potential demise;
on the other it has made them virtually fearless.
Think about it.
How
would you act if you woke up every morning thinking that this day could
be your last? Or at least took a moment to imagine how you would be
eulogized at your funeral? (An exercise that Stephen Covey recommended
in his wildly popular “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,”
although admittedly “live in a war zone” did not make the list.)
The
point is this: you'd enjoy the day you had.
And if you continued to
survive until the next morning, this daily exercise might develop into a
mantra for how you lived your life. And you might bother to take that
beach day, or spend more time with your family. You might grow a pair
and launch that startup you've been thinking about (Boom: Silicon Wadi)
or stop a beautiful woman on the street and insist that she have lunch
with you, or park on the sidewalk if there was no other parking within a
five-block radius. You might climb a mountain, or go scuba diving or
backpack in South America for a year. All things that Israelis do in
droves, and that, in my opinion, probably lead to a more fulfilling
existence.
Why—if they probably can't find a job or afford the apartment that they live in—are Israelis so damn happy?
This
brings us to the second part of the paradox: Israelis have a lot to
fear. And so they've learned to fear nothing.
A study published in the
Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that Israelis
recover from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) more quickly than
people of other Western nations. The study compared people who
experienced 18 months of terror during the Second Intifada to New
Yorkers after 9/11 and found that the amount of PTSD in Israel was
similar to New York immediately following the collapse of the Twin
Towers. However, one and two months after the attack, PTSD was
significantly higher in the U.S. than it was during the Second Intifada.
Several
studies have repeatedly illustrated the rapid habituation to new
conflicts by the Israeli public. And still other studies have
consistently shown that while the level of anxiety in Israel is
typically higher than other Western nations, the level of clinical
anxiety remains very low, even during periods of immense violence.
So
even though Israelis are painfully aware of the never-ending threats,
they're also braver because of them. By experiencing more anxiety on a
daily basis, they've become inoculated against bad things when they do
occur, and habituate to them rapidly. They are able to function in spite
of them.
And if they have learned how to get on with life despite a
credible threat of chemical warfare or irate threats coming out of Iran,
it follows that they can probably deal well with housing and economic
woes. Everything here is simply small potatoes in comparison.
Daily
life in Tel Aviv is rife with examples of this: A dog bites another dog
at the park. Maybe a little yelling ensues in the good Israeli way, but
no one throws any punches or threatens to sue. Someone cuts in front of
you in line at a chaotic grocery store on Friday afternoon. You grumble
but let it pass. Apartment hunting on foot in 110 degrees all day?
Should've worn layers. You can't get an office job out of the army so
you wait tables for a few years? Nothing to be ashamed of.
These
experiences, I'm embarrassed to admit, have the ability to frustrate me
to the point that my day (or week, or month) is ruined. And part of the
struggle living here is that they often do. But to an Israeli, my
thinking about these things one minute after they happen seems like
overhyped drama.
And
this tough Israeli psyche doesn't just manifest itself within the
die-hards who’ve lived here for decades, like my 86-year-old
ex-paratrooper neighbor Fishkay, who was born in Israel and says,
"Nothing scares me" with such a stone-cold expression on his weathered
face that you truly believe him.
Even young people who had never
experienced conflict before this last scuffle in November handled it
better than I did.
I
crumpled into a ball in the rocket-proof hallway of my Tel Aviv
apartment building and sobbed into my dog’s fur. (Unfortunately Fishkay
was on hand to witness the whole humiliating display.)
“Why aren’t
they scared?” my American friends and I uttered to each other in
disbelief for the entire duration of Operation Pillar of Defense.
Being
raised in Israel lends to a unique mental capacity for overcoming
hardship that is unlike any other Western country in the world, a
mindset which, if you’re living in a place where it's tough to find a
job or pay your rent and people regularly threaten to wipe you off the
map, could come in pretty darn handy.
So
where does that leave me? A non-Jew who doesn't identify with the
historic narrative of persecution; a non-Israeli who is unaccustomed to
living under the threat of war; and an American that has come to “expect
more and pay less” like the Target slogan so succinctly proclaims?
Like
everyone else in this country I’ll either have to adapt and be happy or
get out. And in true Israeli fashion, I'm sure the locals will be cool
with it either way.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/14/why-are-the-israelis-so-damn-happy.html
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