Happiness—and, at times, its absence—sits right in the center of so much that we do. We refer to it constantly in passing—as a goal, a state of mind, an outcome, an invocation, and so on—and we tend to do so as though we know exactly what we are talking about, and as though we know for certain that everyone else around us is talking about the same thing. But do we? And are they?
Although this article isn't about the strange and troubling year that we have just been through, it was, in part, inspired by it. At the height of the first lockdown—when people found themselves sundered, fending off unexpected anxieties and fears—I found myself thinking about happiness, and noticing from our collective distanced conversation just how individual, idiosyncratic, and mysterious our ideas of happiness seem to be.
I wanted to dig deeper into exactly that—into the very different and often contradictory ways we talk about, search for, and experience happiness. To that end, I spoke to 12 very different people. All of them are famous in some way, and each was chosen as a person with interesting life experiences who might articulate a distinct viewpoint. There is a youthful singer-songwriter (Phoebe Bridgers), an acclaimed new playwright (Jeremy O. Harris), a World Series-winning baseball player (Mookie Betts), a TV presenter and comedian (Samantha Bee), an actor recently turned TV show host (Drew Barrymore), two very different venerated actors in their later years (Anthony Hopkins, Goldie Hawn), a rapper (Roddy Ricch), a comedian who rebuilt his career after tragedy (Tracy Morgan), an activist who spent much of the previous decade in jail (Chelsea Manning), a film director and artist (David Lynch), and a writer (Roxane Gay). They were not, for the most part, selected as people who I expected to have any particular expertise on the subject of happiness, other than the expertise that we all have by virtue of having been either happy or not happy in our lives.
The two slight exceptions to that are Goldie Hawn and David Lynch. Hawn has a foundation that promotes its mindfulness program in schools and has cowritten a book on the subject; happiness is a topic she has studied, and she is eager to share what she has learned. (As a side note, you may be aware that these days there is a whole happiness-industry ecosystem: a discrete genre of books, podcasts, and courses. But I'd argue that this ecosystem's influence is still limited; tellingly, it was only in conversation with Hawn that it came up.) David Lynch's focus on happiness follows from his fervent belief in the practice of Transcendental Meditation, something he popularizes through his David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace.
I did wonder whether one common factor amongst these interviewees might seem distracting: the fact that most of them are wealthier than many of those reading this article. When some interviewees mention the silver linings and surprising upsides that they discovered in the time of quarantine, for instance, I hope readers will appreciate the honest self-examination of their responses, given to a question that they have been asked. In any case, for the most part, I'm not at all confident that the wealthier and more privileged of these interviewees have an exceptional view of—or access to—happiness. (And if you really think that famous people are effortlessly happier, you certainly haven't been listening to, or believing, what they've been telling you in their interviews and songs and books, year after year.)
I talked with the people who appear in this article separately over the telephone. (Aside from Chelsea Manning; she meant to audio-call me on FaceTime but mistakenly videoed instead.) David Lynch and Anthony Hopkins spoke from long-term isolation in Los Angeles homes. Samantha Bee had just returned to New York City from a long summer in rural Connecticut with her husband and three children, where her weekly show had been filmed by her husband against the backdrop of the surrounding woods. Roddy Ricch was driving around Los Angeles, running errands. Goldie Hawn and Phoebe Bridgers were at their homes in different parts of the same city. Tracy Morgan was at home in New Jersey where in the background for most of the conversation was the beeping of what sounded like a truck being backed up. Roxane Gay was at home in New York, and Drew Barrymore was also in New York after filming a live episode of her new morning TV show. Mookie Betts was at home in his hometown of Nashville, where he and his family had returned from Los Angeles for the off-season after his World Series triumph. Jeremy O. Harris was at a friend's home, waiting for their dinner sushi delivery in London, a city he'd been based in since the spring lockdown halted a production of his play Daddy there. Chelsea Manning was at the Brooklyn apartment she'd had to quickly find after being released from jail into a world of looming quarantine in March.
Aside from asking each interviewee to tell me about a time when they were happiest, and to tell me when they had been happiest in the past year, and to tell me about some other things, large and small, that made them happy, and to ask them about songs and other works of art and also things that they wear that make them happy, I tried to incrementally probe different aspects of happiness by asking all of them the following questions: What do you think happiness is? How important is it? What does it feel like? What's the opposite of happiness? What used to make you happy when you were a child? Have you become happier or less happy as you've got older? What have you learned about happiness, and about what makes you happy and what doesn't, as you grow older? How much of the time are you happy? Are you happier than most people, or are most people happier than you? What do you do when you're not happy? Are you more creative when you're happy or when you're unhappy? Do you think about happiness much? Can someone be too happy?
Questions so simple, in a way, that they might seem banal, except that sometimes it's precisely answers to the simplest questions that reveal just how much we may not know. I'd worried that these questions would seem repetitive, but it's a testament to just how evasive happiness is, both to attain and to describe, that there were almost always engaging new answers. Even when a few common themes surfaced—simplicity, selflessness, family—none were mentioned in the same way by most of the interviewees.
This article, which gathers together just some of the most memorable and descriptive and illuminating thoughts shared as answers to these questions, isn't intended as a guide to help anyone become happy, or happier. If you read what follows expecting clear and unambiguous answers about what happiness is, accompanied by straightforward directions advising how it should best be found, you will be disappointed. There is no clear road map here. But what you may find, amid this cavalcade of voices, are all kinds of clues. I very much hope that some of them may resonate and prove useful.
Here, then, is a Tower of Babel on the day it took happiness as its subject. Reading back what was said, I'm struck by how swiftly what might have been superficial exchanges frequently evolved into conversations that were revealing, intimate, and often vulnerable. It turns out that when we talk about happiness, we talk about who we are.
Roxane Gay: I think happiness is feeling complete and feeling completely seen.
Phoebe Bridgers: For me, it’s just what happens in between thinking about shit obsessively. Accidental moments of living in your own body.
Tracy Morgan: To me, happiness is a simple thing. Happiness is simply having something to look forward to. I look forward to my daughter graduating out of the first grade or fifth grade, my son graduating from college. That’s happiness to me, that’s progress, that’s my future. That’s the sun rising.
Drew Barrymore: I’m starting to wonder if it is when you’re not obsessing about the flaws in everything.
David Lynch: A fulfillment of a desire gives you happiness.
Jeremy O. Harris: I think that happiness is a thing that I will always be chasing. Happiness is like a muse that doesn’t want to stay for too long, at least for someone like me. I don’t think that I have a body that is welcoming to happiness. So it’s constantly just out of my grasp. And sometimes it comes upon me when I’m not looking for it, when I don’t expect it.
Mookie Betts: I can’t even really explain it.… You’re just able to escape from kind of reality to whatever that can get you into smiles, get you into a good mood, get you into wanting to help others. I think you’re most happy when you’re not focused on yourself, you’re just focused on trying to help other people, trying to make other people happy. I think that’s when you’re really happy yourself.
Samantha Bee: I’m not sure what it is, but I think it feels like when you are your true self: when you drop all of the pretense of the outside world and you’re your true self who knows the real you. You can relax.
Goldie Hawn: Well, happiness to me is like the ocean. It’s just waves on top of the ocean. You have happy days, happy experiences, but they go away, and it isn’t always something you can hold on to. True contentment and joy and deep feeling that you can connect to at any time you want, that’s inside of you, is more at the bottom of the ocean. Calm and connectedness, silence and beauty—it’s a little deeper.
Chelsea Manning: I think very materially in this regard. It’s obviously connected to chemical responses in the brain, like your dopamine and your endorphins and things like that. One of the reasons why I try not to seek the highs is because it’s essentially like a chemical—if it’s chemically induced, then the highs will have lows, and you’ll come down, and everything else. I seek contentment more than happiness. I think that trying to achieve joy in your day-to-day life is a fallacy.
Roddy Ricch: I feel like happiness comes from within.
Anthony Hopkins: To me, it’s just being content with what’s right now. It’s a complete mystery, life. I don’t understand it. To quote Socrates, “I know nothing.” I really know nothing. And that’s to me happiness: to acknowledge that I know nothing. I’m insignificant. It’s all meaningless to me. And it’s a bit of fun to have a little bit of acclaim and be successful or achieve things—it’s fine. And I’m sure that if I do something else, get another job, and I do that okay, I’ll think, “Oh, good.” But finally, at the end of it all, as Mel Blanc said, “That’s all, folks!” [laughs] I don’t know what my epitaph will be. Probably something like “What the hell was that all about?”
David Lynch: I’m just kind of happy in the doing of things. You know, even just having a great cup of coffee is happiness. Getting an idea, or realizing an idea, working on a painting or working on a piece of sculpture, working on a film.
Phoebe Bridgers: Walks. A $6 coffee. Plugging in your phone across the room from you when you go to sleep. Getting an alarm clock, if you need it, for that reason.
Drew Barrymore: When I really nail it with my kids and I say something inventive and imaginative to help them, I feel like a superhero. Like somehow I came up with the decoding of the bomb at 0.01 seconds.
Roxane Gay: There are lots of small things that make me happy. You know, I love when a great song comes on and I know all of the words.
Samantha Bee: Most of the things that make me happy tend to be so small. That’s just how I am—I really focus on what is really close to me in most aspects of life. Being with my family primarily makes me very happy. Travel, and seeing the world, makes me very happy. Cooking fills me with joy. I love to cook and bake. I love to go to a farmers market. I love to read cookbooks.
Chelsea Manning: I work on small projects, electronics, mostly software. I have a box just full of Raspberry Pis, Arduinos, cables, resistors, soldering irons, that kind of thing. I work with hardware, and I make little odds-and-ends for myself and for other people.
Jeremy O. Harris: Being able to sleep for only three hours and wake up feeling refreshed for the day makes me really happy, because it feels like I've beaten something about my humanity.
Anthony Hopkins: I like having a cup of tea with my wife. Maybe a couple of cookies or something like that. I play the piano a lot. I paint. I play with my cat, Niblo.
Mookie Betts: It’s really two things for me: being able to play sports, just because I grew up doing that, and just spending time with family. I mean, we play Scrabble, we have coloring contests, we have cooking contests, we have singing contests, we have dancing contests—we have all these little competitions, because my family is very competitive. We go to Dollar General or Walmart and go through little-kids’-section aisles and get a coloring book, go get three or four of them, and we’ll just pick a page out and we’ll color. We’re honest with who we think is the best. I never win the coloring contest. I think it’s a technique thing. I’m not an artist. But I always try. Every time, I think I’m going to win. I’m never successful, but it’s always fun. The cooking contest, I think I’ve only lost one, and we’ve probably had 20 or 30 of them. We do them all the time. What we do is, we will call another family member and ask them for three random ingredients. Basically Chopped, but at home. And usually two-on-two. One time we did lemon, popcorn, and pumpkin. I think we made, like, a little pizza situation, and it was layered with popcorn and pumpkin, and it had, like, lemony sauce. It was the best that it could have been, like a 5 out of 10. That’s never going to be good, but I made it better than them—that’s all that matters.
Jeremy O. Harris: Sort of mindless scrolling on TikTok for hours makes me really happy—I really like seeing minute-long windows into abject humor.
Chelsea Manning: I watch unboxing videos. I watch videos of MRE reviews. There’s this guy, MRE Steve, that I’ve been watching for quite some time. He reviews military ready-to-eat rations from all these different countries. And they’re really addictive videos.
Jeremy O. Harris: Also, not answering emails makes me happy. I truly hate emails. I would much rather exist in a landscape where I could go without answering emails and no one would think it meant that I was a dick, they would just think that it meant I was trying to stay happy.
Tracy Morgan: The simple shit makes me happy. Like taking a breath. That’s my blessing—the breath I take every day. Every breath. I’m good. I got hit by a truck before in my life, man. I almost lost my life. My friend died. It made me grateful for life. I can’t be mad at nobody—I’m here.
Chelsea Manning: When was I happiest in the last year? You would think it would be me getting out of jail. [Manning, who had been previously imprisoned from 2010 to 2017, was released in March 2020 after a further period of incarceration imposed due to her refusal to testify before a grand jury investigating Wikileaks.] But the happiest moments that I’ve had are whenever I’ve been helping out people. Like, here in New York City, in Lower Manhattan, we had a small occupation out at City Hall. And I was there a lot: delivering things, helping out with different things. It’s not a big deal, but it makes me feel genuinely good. I don’t necessarily do it for that, but it’s an added benefit.
Jeremy O. Harris: In August my boyfriend and I took a car and drove from Austria through Slovenia to Italy. It was a very happy trip, but I think that I was happiest when I was driving through Slovenia, a country I’d never imagined I would ever be in, and going to this really amazing restaurant called Hiša Franko that we were invited to by another friend. That entire drive through the Julian Alps was insane, and we were listening to this podcast that my friend Janicza Bravo was on with another new friend, Justin Simien, while also listening to a book on tape of my friend Marlon James’s novel The Book of Night Women. That was probably the happiest I was. Because it was just simple: I’m holding the hand of a man that I adore and who adores me, we’re listening to artists that have changed the way I see the world and who I aspire toward, and then we’re enjoying one of the most beautifully crafted, amazing meals in a part of the world that very few people are able to just travel to, that I was blessed enough to be able to visit in a way that I never thought I’d be able to visit. And I will never forget that. I think that day, that was one of the happiest I’ve ever been.
Roxane Gay: My wedding was pretty great. We eloped because of COVID. We decided to do it on a Saturday afternoon. Her cousin had come down to see us for the weekend, and her best friend also lives in Los Angeles, and so we went to an office park in Encino and got married at a place called InstantmarriageLA.com. And it was all sort of strange and funny. We FaceTimed my family and hers so that they could be there. And it was just one of those spontaneous, totally casual, great days.
Mookie Betts: It’s going to sound so weird, but in the [MLB] bubble. For that whole month. There was two places I could go, and that was to my hotel room or at the field. After I got to reflect on it, the bubble was actually a great experience. I actually had a lot of fun with [my fiancée] Bri and [daughter] Kynlee. Even though you’re stuck in one hotel room, it gets messy—this, that, and the other—that’s a part of it. I don’t want to experience it again, but doing it once, it definitely made me happy.
Anthony Hopkins: I was in England making this film with Olivia Colman called The Father—I think that was probably the most exhilarating time I’ve had. It was a painful subject, about dementia, but they were such great people to work with. I said to Olivia one day, “Do they actually pay us to do this?” It’s a lot of fun. And yeah, if people want to take it very seriously and intensely, that’s up to them. But I’ve done all that in the past, and I think, “No, I’ll just relax.” I have learned a few tricks on the way—you know, I’m experienced in my business—all I try to spread around me is a bit of peace and respect for people’s other work, and be generous, be kind.
Phoebe Bridgers: I took a trip to New York in February. I played Carnegie Hall, and I was gearing up for the album, and it was the first time that people had heard it, and because everybody was excited, it was kind of infectious. And New York is rad because I just have so many friends there that it almost feels like I live there. So yeah, it was great.
Roddy Ricch: I feel like I’m just a content guy—I don’t really get into the highs and the lows of life. I had to go through so much young, from the time I was 17 to the age I am now. I had to learn so much, to the point where I learned a lesson in actually dealing with happiness—you never want to get too caught up in the high, because when you get caught up in the cheers, you get caught up in the boos, you know what I’m saying? People would cheer you all day, and then the second you hear a boo, you be fucked up. So it's like, at all times, I've got to keep this content personality within myself. It's something that I've learned to do. Because like I said, I've had to go through a lot of things, being who I am, at such a young age, that you've just kind of got to be wise beyond your years. If you don't, then the world will swallow you up.
Tracy Morgan: When I’m around my daughter, Maven, anytime she hugs me and says, “Daddy, I love you.” I told you: Happiness is simple. These are simple moments that make me happy.
David Lynch: Kind of every day. I like isolation. I’ve been isolated for six months or seven months now, however long it’s been. I’m honestly happy every day. At the same time, you can be happy inside and still worried about the world as it is right now, so many people suffering and so much negativity. There’s so much stress in the air, it’s unbelievable. I can feel it. You can feel it. But I believe that we are in a transition to a very good time…but we don’t know how long the transition’s going to last.
Samantha Bee: You know what? It was my birthday the other day, and I had a really happy day. It was just really wonderful. The sun was shining, everybody was in a great mood, we went for a beautiful hike, I had a wonderful breakfast, I did a little exercise. We had a cake, which I love. We had a great dinner. It was a terrific day. And then we kind of concluded the day by watching a movie all together on the couch. It was perfect.
Goldie Hawn: Strangely enough, when COVID first came and we were really in lockdown and it was like there were no sounds in the sky. I could hear the birds out back. I’d go out in the morning and just listen to them. That first month was so incredibly quiet, and I thought, “Oh, my God, how powerful are we as humans.…” Think of our power if we just make decisions collectively, what kind of change we could make in our environment.
Samantha Bee: I am more creative when I’m happy. I’m more creative when I walk, actually—when I’m doing a brisk walk. Or when I’m driving. I love to drive, and it just kind of detaches me from my brain a little bit and lets the creativity in.
Jeremy O. Harris: I think I’m more creative when I’m unhappy. I think that I haven’t allowed myself the time to train my muscles of creativity to build from happiness as much as I’ve trained them to build from sadness.
Anthony Hopkins: You know, years ago, I used to hang around with a lot of drinkers, like I was myself, be a complete pain in the ass to everyone. Because it’s creative, you know, it’s a badge of honor. I thought, “If I stop doing this, I won’t be able to create anymore.” Of course, it’s the biggest nonsense of all. The biggest con trick of all. Most of my friends from those days are dead now.
Drew Barrymore: I think when you’re young, you think that all the drama must lead to something, but I don’t know if it does anymore. I think sanity and good behavior probably lead to more channels being open. So I’m going to go with happy now, and I love that so much of my creativity came out of total torture and invincibility when I was younger.
David Lynch: You’re just as creative when you’re miserable, but you don’t feel like creating when you’re miserable. I always use the example of the starving artist in the garret. It’s a very romantic idea, maybe a way to get girls—you know, they come and help you out, bring you soup, or maybe spend the night. But for the starving artist, freezing in the garret, it’s not romantic. When you’re depressed, hungry, and cold, you don’t feel like making stuff. And it’s not fun. Your ideas don’t flow so much. So negativity, to my mind, is the enemy of creativity. When you’re really happy, filled with energy, and you’ve got those ideas flowing, it’s so beautiful: You want to work, you want to realize those ideas, translate those ideas to one medium or another. And that’s the ticket. If you’re bringing that happiness out, this will help you so much. You’ll start getting ideas to get a heater in your garret, you’ll start getting ideas to fix the place up, get your stuff in there, build a place to work, and you’ll start getting more enthusiastic, you’ll get more energy, you’ll get the ideas flowing, you’ll get happier in the doing, you’ll get filled with a kind of universal love, the world looks better and better, you get this kind of inner peace going. You just feel good in your body. You feel like working. And you’ll still get many, many girls.
Phoebe Bridgers: I like to write about feeling unhappy, but I am totally despondent and unable to make stuff when I’m depressed. I write the shittiest songs when I’m really upset.
Chelsea Manning: I can doomscroll and spiral. I have had at least three major spirals or breakdowns from just being sucked into the internet and being sucked into social media. I tend to avoid that now. That’s what’s really brought me the worst parts in the last few years. Apart from being in jail or being in prison. I would say social media spirals can be pretty close to that, in terms of the amount of stress, anxiety, self-fulfilling prophecy: “Everybody in the world hates me,” “I can’t do anything.” The worst part about social media is that it can be this instant reinforcement of your worst thoughts. It’s such a powerful thing that it affects the most powerful people in the world—it hits their brains too. Sucks them in.
Anthony Hopkins: When I was young, but not that much younger—maybe over 10 years ago, maybe less than that—I had fits of depression and darkness and then I’d be manic. If I’d become too manic, or too boisterous, I’d think, “Eh, watch it! Calm down, calm down.…” The balance of the mind… I mean, it’s such a dichotomy, isn’t it? It’s such a dangerous area. It’s our friend, and it also can be our enemy if we listen to the voices. I don’t believe anything I think anymore.
Roxane Gay: Sometimes we build happiness up to be this perfect thing, and so we keep waiting for that perfect thing to come around, and we decide we’re never happy and we’ve never known happiness. But the older I get, the more I certainly realize that happiness is textured and imperfect. And that’s okay. Sometimes happiness doesn’t mean you have everything you want. It means that you have enough.
Roddy Ricch: When I was younger, I used to think having all the money in the world would solve all the problems and shit. I mean, when you’re a kid, you just have the wildest imagination. I didn’t have money growing up, so I thought that money would make me happy. But then when I got money, I realized it just didn’t make me happy. Money is just paper to me at this point, but back then I just thought that that was so much more than just paper. You’ve got to kind of readjust your life, find your happiness in different places, because money is not where you’re going to find happiness. It’s just a filler, and that filler goes away. There’s no tangible thing that can make you happy. It’s something that comes from within.
Anthony Hopkins: What makes me really happy is—what makes me free, I think is the best word to use—is the feeling that nothing is of that much importance. We’re pretty insignificant little dots in our vast universe. I have a saying for myself: Nothing to win, nothing to prove, nothing to win, nothing to lose, no sweat, no big deal.
David Lynch: I don’t remember not really being happy, really, until I got to be high school age. And then I started getting a lot of melancholy, and sort of depression and anxieties and all kinds of worries. I just got filled with killer bees, you know. And one day it struck me that maybe meditation was a way to go within and find that happiness. And this led me to look into many different forms of meditation, because there’s a hundred different forms out there in the world today. And I finally found and loved Transcendental Meditation, as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, revived by Maharishi, an ancient form of meditation. And so my first meditation, I experienced big, big, big bliss. Big happiness. [This was on July 1, 1973. Lynch says that he has meditated twice daily every single day since then.] Now I know where the within is, and now I know how to get there, and that’s where the true happiness is.
Chelsea Manning: Whenever I am at my highest sort of being is when I’m content with what I have. It’s not about the peaks so much as it is these moments where I’m like, “Okay, I feel satisfied. My needs are met, for now. And I’m okay.” I think a lot of it comes from my prison experience. It’s like learning to find joy and hope despite not having access to close family, not having access to close friends, and just sort of being in the moment. Because I feel like we spend so much time seeking having, as opposed to being. The strangest times that I’ve found that I’ve been content are moments when I have so little that everything sort of falls away. Finding little moments of joy. Like when I’m playing Dungeons & Dragons or chess with somebody in prison, I am a deeper level of happy, or content, than I could be being free with a lot of things—out drinking with friends or hanging out at a pre-COVID party, or something like that. You know, we don’t have anything—I’ve literally played chess and these things with scraps of paper where we’ve just written the things on that because we don’t have pieces—but yet we’re still able to sort of self-actualize in a really deep way. It’s the connection with somebody else. You know, living with other prisoners can be difficult because you are essentially in an environment where it’s a totalitarian state where the prison guards control everything, and you are struggling to survive with what little you have. But in those moments with each other, we are still able to think, we’re still able to learn, we’re still able to grow as people and survive—and not just survive, but somehow grow in a space like that.
Roddy Ricch: What does it feel like? Being complete within yourself. Just feeling like you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing.
Jeremy O. Harris: Like a moment when I’m no longer frigid. It feels like I’m being filled with something. It feels like my extremities are finally warm. Like my laughs aren’t caught in my throat. Like my ability to express is completely and utterly unfiltered.
Phoebe Bridgers: It just doesn’t feel like things are as hard. A feeling of the things that are hard in life just being easier.
Roxane Gay: It feels like safety, it feels like joy, where you just feel satisfied. You feel complete and whole.
Drew Barrymore: Sometimes like winning the war. I want to know happiness that is free and easy, but I’m not sure if I’m wise enough to recognize it in those moments. I definitely recognize happiness that I fought for. Or that I really, really worried about and then finally got to. I know an effort in happiness.
Mookie Betts: You’re smiling and laughing, you’re just not thinking about other things other than whatever you’re doing, or whoever you’re with. I think that’s happiness.
Chelsea Manning: There’s a sort of safety, there's a sort of self-reassurance, there's a power that's in happiness. I always think of the duality of "happiness despite...," so it's being able to sort of forget, at least for a moment, or at least feel like the difficult things that are happening around me in this duality are achievable.
Goldie Hawn: I mean, it’s obviously an amalgamation of our neurology as well as our biology. But I know that where I feel, it is actually in my chest. In my heart.
David Lynch: That’s a great, great, important question. Super important question. This bliss that comes from within is physical happiness, like when you get a massage or if you are kind of pulsating or vibrating. Physical happiness—the body is just humming in happiness is. And then it's also emotional happiness. So you get thrilling emotion with it. Then mentally you're just singing, mentally, in happiness. And then it's a spiritual feeling as well. So it's four different kinds of happiness happening at once. This is a power of this bliss that comes from within.
Anthony Hopkins: Oh, I don't know. Just a sense of contentment. I'm not jumping up down all the time, but I just mosey through the day and do my painting and play piano. And I get peace when I read.
Tracy Morgan: You want to know what happiness looks like? When I’m performing, I look out there and I see all those people laughing, that makes me happy—to see them happy, having fun.
Roddy Ricch: No, I ain’t thought about happiness this much until this conversation. It’s making me think, though.
Drew Barrymore: Yeah, I think about it all the time. Like: All. The. Time. I’m consumed by the notion of it, because I don’t totally understand what it is. I still really believe: If I feel that everyone else is happy, that is when I’m happiest. And I don’t know if that’s codependent. I don’t know if that’s fucked up. I don’t know if that leads to ultimate happiness. But I truly believe that taking care of people, whether they’re the people I love and know the most or complete strangers, I’m so genuinely happy when others are happy. It isn’t always based in me. It is based on others. And if that’s codependent, well, fuck it, then I am. But I really get off on others’ contentedness, safety, joy.
Chelsea Manning: I think about community a lot. A community happiness. I feel like Western European and American society tend to value individual happiness, whereas I view it as much more spread out. So I do think about that—I think about how the people in my community, in my quarantine pod, or on my block, are feeling and how they’re doing.
Roxane Gay: I teach creative writing, and I challenge my students to write a happy story because there are so few happy stories, especially in literary fiction. I challenge them to because a lot of times students and people, readers, don’t think that a happy story can be an interesting story. For whatever reason—and I include myself in this—people tend to be drawn to writing darker things. I think a lot of people struggle to articulate what happiness is and what it looks like.
Samantha Bee: I don’t talk about it with other people. Except with my family—if your heart swells when you’re with the kids or whatever, occasionally I’ll mention how happy I am in that moment. And they obviously roll their eyes and think it’s revolting. And then they’re like, “Can we not wash the dishes tonight, then?” I’m like, “No, you still have to wash the dishes, even though you make me very happy.”
Jeremy O. Harris: I do think that maybe sadness gets a bad rap. And I think that maybe happiness gets too good a rap. I think that the opposite of happiness is unabashedly sadness, but I think that under that framework, one has to recognize that sadness maybe is a constant of humanity that’s more pervasive than happiness and therefore not necessarily just this feeling we should run away from or feel ashamed of. But no one wants to write an article about sadness necessarily, right? Which I think is why I want to root for it a bit.
Drew Barrymore: Whoever came up with the word happy is really smart, because it does put a smile on your face. You almost can’t say it without smiling. Which is pretty awesome—like, it actually puts your face into the shape of a smile when you say it. Whoever created the word happy, I say: Well done.
Goldie Hawn: When I was 11 years old, I was asked what I wanted to be when I grow up. I said, “I want to be happy.” I was 11!
Tracy Morgan: I’m beginning to think happiness is a choice that we make every day when we wake up.
Roxane Gay: I think a lot of times we don’t really know what happiness is. We don’t know how to appreciate happiness when we do experience it. And I don’t know that it’s safe or easy to admit you’re happy, because then people think that you’re bragging.
Anthony Hopkins: There's something I read the other day about space and time. I think it was maybe Einstein who said that we can't actually measure time, but at this very moment, sitting here, we go into an extended present, which takes us into the future. We can't go back, but we extend this present moment until it expands and expands, and then in nanoseconds it vanishes. So I just think I'm given to a lot of thinking about that.
Tracy Morgan: I'm away from people when I'm not happy. I don't want to be around people because I don't want to give them that energy. Why should I make them unhappy? That's not fair to them. It's hard enough—we're all just trying to make ourselves happy and find happiness. I'm not selfish like that, where I'm going to make you unhappy because I'm feeling unhappy.
Samantha Bee: When I travel for work, I really love the work, the work makes me happy, but I’m adrift as a human being. I don’t know what to do with my off time. I don’t enjoy that part. I don’t want to be by myself on the banks of a river that’s beautiful, I want to be sharing that with my kids. And if they’re not there, I’m just kind of like useless.
Phoebe Bridgers: I experience it sometimes when I'm making plans, so I guess that it’s sort of living in the future.
Roxane Gay: It’s hard to balance happiness and reality.
Roddy Ricch: I feel like struggle and sadness, anger, they’re just as important. Because just as you can learn from good times, you can learn from bad times. There’s good lessons to be learned in those times as well.
Anthony Hopkins: There was some guy published a book many years ago, quite a thick book, and it was full of empty pages, except the two center pages were Don’t take your damn self so seriously.
Chelsea Manning: I focus on small things. I really focus on small, achievable goals in my daily life. And this comes from the military, this comes from prison, this comes from being homeless. The big things can feel overwhelming, but the little things that you can do in your day-to-day life, like helping someone, or picking up a piece of trash—achieving these small, achievable goals—are really what make me feel like: We got this. In solitary confinement it was also the small goals. Less trying to get through the end of the month or to the end of the year, and much more about trying to get through the next meal.
Tracy Morgan: Trust me, when I’m happy, everybody around me know I’m happy, because I’m going to make them happy, I’m going to spread that shit out with them.
Phoebe Bridgers: I have this stupid tendency to think that sad people are smarter. Like I think happy people just don’t know everything, and that I’m smarter because I’m miserable, or something. And I think that’s just, like, a dangerous place to be. I don’t think that sad people know everything anymore. If anything, it’s kind of changing for me, where now I listen to Elliott Smith with a lot more just sympathy. And I’m like, “Damn, I wish someone could have drug you out of this trench.”
Drew Barrymore: My highs and lows used to be also a lot more drastic. So I’m trying to find that elusive bitch named balance. I think I might actually have, like, one or two numbers in her address—maybe on my deathbed I’ll have the full zip code.
Goldie Hawn: I remember years ago, when I was on television all the time, and I mean eons ago, and I was laughing all the time. [Hawn’s first fame came on the TV show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, between 1968 and 1970.] You know, who I kind of am. It was very, very authentic. But on the other side, when I wasn't smiling, people would come up to me and go, "Oh, smile, Goldie, smile!" And I used to say, "Yeah, but I've got to have something to smile about." The reality is that when they see you like that, they love it, they want it to be the way. They have issues around finding someone who can make them laugh, be happy, be joyful, be enthusiastic about life, whatever, and then when they see them in a contemplative space, it's in some ways difficult to see that that person actually has…not a dark side, but a sad side or a contemplative side. They'd say, "Goldie! Laugh! Giggle!" and I would say, "Well, make me giggle." It is interesting how, the minute you're not laughing, it's like, Oh, my gosh, what's wrong? “Nothing! I'm just thinking. I wasn't born with a smile on my face.”
Roddy Ricch: I don’t go looking for happiness in things—I look for happiness within myself. If you can’t find happiness within yourself, then you don’t have happiness. There’s nothing in the world that can give you happiness but something inside of you.
David Lynch: One thing I’ve noticed is that many of us, we do what we call work, for a goal, for a result. And in the doing, it's not that much happiness. And yet that's our life going by. If you're transcending every day... it eventually comes to: It doesn't matter what your work is, you just get happy in the work, you get happy in the little things and the big things. And if the result isn't what you dreamed of, it doesn't kill you if you enjoyed the doing of it. It's important that we enjoy the doing of our life.
Samantha Bee: So can a person be too happy? I mean, I think you could conflate happiness with being too naive about the world or anything. But I think people who are happy are great. We should learn from them.
Drew Barrymore: [laughs] According to station managers, at the first week of my show, I was too happy! They were like: “Is she going to be this enthusiastic the entire season? Because it’s too much.” I just didn’t know what to do with the note. I felt a little embarrassed, you know, and then I kind of just started laughing and I was like, “Yeah, no, I see it too—I really am fucking excited, aren’t I?”
Anthony Hopkins: I know nothing. I don’t know anything. My favorite story is “The Appointment in Samarra.” About the servant who goes to the market to get goods for the caliph, and in the marketplace he sees Death. Death beckons to him, so he gets on his horse and he runs back to his master and says, “I saw Death in the marketplace. Can you lend me your fastest steed? I must go off to Samarra tonight, to be with my family.” “Yeah, go, go.” So the master himself goes down, and he sees Death in the marketplace and goes up to him and says, “You wanted to talk to my servant. What was your message for him?” Death says, “I just wanted to tell him I’m going to meet him tonight in Samarra.” [laughs] Enjoy it while it lasts. Enjoy it while it lasts. Because we don’t know. We know nothing.
Tracy Morgan: I just forget what made me unhappy, or try to find out where the communication breakdown took place, fix it, and move forward. Keep moving forward. You got tomorrow. And you know what they say about tomorrow, right? [Morgan starts singing down the phone] "The sun’ll come out...tomorrow! So you got to hang on till tomorrow! There'll be sun..." [Morgan stops singing his Annie showtune, as though he has finished. But then he starts right up again] “Just thinking about that tomorrow! Must be able to hang on till tomorrow. There'll be sun..." Know what I told you at the beginning of the conversation that makes me happy? The sun. [Starts singing for a third time] "The sun’ll come out...!" The sun will come out tomorrow! You want to stay upset? Can't stay upset. At some point that sun's gonna come out, regardless.
Roxane Gay: I think happiness is extraordinarily important. And I also think it’s incredibly elusive.
Jeremy O. Harris: I think I’ve gotten more comfortable being unhappy as I’ve gotten older.
David Lynch: Bliss is our nature. We’re supposed to be happy. We’re not supposed to be sad. We’re not supposed to be suffering. We’re supposed to be happy campers enjoying life and being kind to one another, and getting along, and making sure that we’re all happy and we’re all together on this beautiful trip.
Roddy Ricch: Being happy, it’s all just about perspective.
Chelsea Manning: It’s the absence of feeling overwhelmed.
Tracy Morgan: I’m looking to make people feel happy. That’s why I do what I do.
Samantha Bee: I guess we’re all striving to achieve it. Isn’t that what we’re all trying to do?
Drew Barrymore: Even though I don’t know what it is exactly, it’s what I wish for everyone.
Chris Heath is a GQ correspondent.
What else inspires happiness for our 12 interviewees? Read more about the music, the art, and the fashion that they discussed with Chris Heath.
A version of this story originally appears in the February 2021 issue with the title "The Happiness Project."
