The "H" in "Army" stands for happiness

hedonia, eudaimonia, and finding the middle way

This is my 52nd FITW newsletter, which makes a year’s worth of weekly missives reflecting on living a worthy life. I’ve actually been doing FITW longer than that because interspersed, as you know, have been nine podcast episodes. But not counting those, today is 52 letters. It’s a bit of a milestone in a sense. While I was kicking around ideas for this week’s letter, I happened to see a friend post the above meme on her Facebook feed. I don’t know who to credit it to. But I laughed for about 10 minutes when I saw it because it encapsulates not only how I feel about my Army experience, but how to live a worthy life, and I want to share some reflections on that with you this week.

So let’s just state the obvious here: this is a play on the old saw “There’s no ‘I’ in ‘Team’,” a thing that gets said a lot in the Army, ironically. To be part of a team means to subordinate the self to the good of the group. Being part of a high functioning team is a powerful experience. In order for a team to be high functioning, individuals have to subordinate themselves, their “I”, to the needs of the group. Human beings are pack animals and working in teams is fundamental our being, and to our success moving from tasty snacks on the African savannah to masters of the planet. It is the source of our power and our dysfunction (take your pick of all the mob riots of 2020-2021 depending on your political leaning as demonstration). One of the best books I have read on the joy of being part of a mob is Among the Thugs by Bill Buford. Despite the good times of breaking and burning things and getting into brawls, and the deep subordination of the self in the emergence of a mob, that isn’t what is meant by high performing teams. The satisfaction from being part of a high functioning team is, at least in part, the good ends to which the team works. It isn’t just the immediate hedonic flow of subordination, but the contribution you can look to when the team has finished its work. Whereas mobs leave nothing in their wake but destruction, high functioning teams achieve something and make a contribution. (This is where I separate out teams that work really well but do evil things - Nazis, Narco-Syndicates, Mafia, etc. - they very efficiently leave a wake of destruction and grief - the opposite of contribution.) There is no “I” in “Mob”, either, but the absence of an “I” doesn’t mean you are doing something worthy. 

My experience of being a soldier, whether I was in an infantry or cavalry unit or working behind a desk in a brick-and-mortar hospital, was of being part of a purpose-driven team. Not all of my local work units were high-functioning teams, but most were good, and I always felt like I had a bigger purpose and was part of something that was much larger than myself. The people who served alongside me knew what we were doing was for a larger purpose, as well. You don’t join the Army to get rich. Maybe you join for the training or the adventure, but you stay, at least in part, for the purpose and to be part of something bigger than self. When I looked at myself in the mirror when I was in uniform, I saw a soldier looking back at me. The uniform is meant to do that to you - for you to see yourself as part of something bigger than you - and it works. 

From the first day of basic training or ROTC or one of the service academies, you are taught that you are expected to subordinate your desires, needs, and even your life if it is called for, for the greater purpose we serve. When you join, you sign away your rights to most choices that normal civilians have - where to live, what organization (meaning unit within the Army or other service) you will be a part of, what you will do for work. This is true even at the expense of your family. People who chafe at any of these things are frowned upon as not being good soldiers (or sailors or airmen). I know many former service members and all of us have stories to tell about assignments we hated that, had we had the power, might have caused us to quit. However, of the many I know, only a tiny fraction feel like their service was worthless. Almost everyone I know looks back on their time in service as deeply meaningful and important in their identity. I almost feel sorry for people who have not served because they have missed out on this and don’t have it as a source of meaning in their lives. 

The Army, and my time in service, is actually a deep source of happiness in my life, and I think in the experiences of most veterans. So why is the mug so funny? And it is funny not only to me, but I’ve shared it with friends who have served or are currently serving, and they all laugh because we all get it. It’s because there are two types of happiness (maybe more, but at least two): hedonia and eudaimonia. (I’ve written about this topic before, most recently in the 3rd FITW here.) These terms go back to the Ancient Greeks. Hedonia refers to pleasure, comfort, and enjoyment. It is the root of hedonism. Eudaimonia refers to a sense of life satisfaction; of being able to reflect on having lived a meaningful, purposeful, and worthy life. The hedonic impulse is all about the moment - it is YOLO in service of FOMO¹. Hedonism is self-centered. Others may join in your enjoyment, but at the heart of hedonia is the self. Our hedonic drives lead us to avoid doing difficult things in favor of engaging in soft things. It is the will to sleep in instead of getting up to exercise, it is the sweet treats we allow ourselves instead of vegetables. It is spending all of your money and ringing up credit card debt paying for a night out or a vacation (because YOLO). This is the kind of happiness that the Army expects you to subordinate. It is the “H” that is most definitely not in “Army”. 

Eudaimonia is the “H” - perhaps a silent “H” - or an “H” that is heard but not said - that is in “Army”. Everyone who has a successful military career learns to subordinate the “I”, which I correlate with hedonic desire, to the needs of the team. It is often painful to subordinate those desires. The Freudian id (the lizard brain, the amygdala) demands to be let out and to run with the mob, to sleep in and gorge on ice cream and beer, to quit when anything gets difficult or dangerous. It suffers when it is refused. Military training is the opposite of feeding the hedonic id. Virtually every training event is practice in disciplining the id. And as I said, every service member has a story of a larger sacrifice they made that required saying no to the hedonic - taking assignments they didn’t want, being deployed for holidays or not being home for life events. Those stories are just part of the military experience. Also part of the military experience is the sense of pride in having overcome the ego in service of something larger. This pride lends itself to the reflective happiness and life satisfaction associated with service. 

The Army (and sister services) are very good at providing the 3Cs of Meaning, which is why so many service members experience eudemonic happiness when they reflect on their service. To refresh, the 3Cs of meaning heuristic is: 

Meaning = Competence x Contribution x Connection

Competence - the military services put a great deal of weight on competence - both specialized and general competence. Specialized competence is how well you do your job; generalized competence is how you go about your responsibilities as an adult, or as a service member. With the military, you are a service member - it is part of your identity - because you are always on. The service can reach into your life in a way that civilian employers cannot, so it is very different.

Contribution - being in the service you know you are serving your country. Sometimes the day to day grind can feel pointless, but it is something most service members I talk to reflect on as having been important to them.

Connection - this is something almost everyone who leaves the service reflects on. There is a sense of being part of a thing that is bigger than yourself. But also there is a sense of community that is hard to replicate in a civilian setting. It is also something that I know I took for granted when I was in the service because it was so ubiquitous - like talking to a fish about water. 

The 3Cs shape one’s experience of meaning and purpose. You need all of them to achieve a state of reflective happiness - of eudaimonia. Military service is great at creating an environment for experiencing all of them. You still have to make the sacrifices, but if you do, it is likely you will experience eudaimonia. 

The thing is, you don’t have to serve in the military to experience the 3Cs and a high level of meaning and purpose. You can experience eudaimonia in any walk of life - service does not just occur in the formal labor market. But the through line of eudaimonia is almost always discipline and sacrifice in service of something greater than the self. That could be service to country or more local community, or it could be service to church or family. It could be all of those things, and living with the challenges of reconciling competing demands of each.  

The poet William Wordsworth once wrote, “The child is the father of the Man.” (the poem is only nine lines) Like most modern readers, I take that to mean we are stewards of our future selves. The things we do or do not do today lead directly to the state of person we are in the future. If we indulge the id today, we pay the price tomorrow. How many of us have said, “The diet starts Monday!” and then reach for yet another piece of (metaphorical or literal) cake? If we discipline ourselves today - to eat better, exercise, study, spend time with our families, save for retirement, pray, etc. - our future self will be grateful, though our id may rail at the unfairness of it all. The id shouts in our ear - everyone else is doing it! Everyone else has this thing I want! Give it to me now! The id demands that we fulfill every hedonic desire. But it is through discipline and often denial of the id that we achieve eudaimonia. 

What is powerful about military service is it is a culture that values discipline over hedonic happiness. There is a cost to eudaimonia - it is the sacrifice of hedonia - but that is why we laugh at the meme - there is no H(edonia) in Army. This is not to say that military service is all grim and gray joylessness. On the contrary, there is a lot of fun and comradery (connection). There is the pride of both long- and short-term goal achievement (competence). And there is the ultimate joy of knowing you are doing something important with that part of your life (contribution). 

All of this said, I want to close with a thought from Aristotle, since hedonia and eudaimonia are Aristotelian ideas (or at least he wrote about them). Aristotle also wrote about the “Golden Mean”. The Golden Mean is the idea that all things best when in balance - that there is a middle point between behaviors that represents an ideal. Courage, for example, is the middle point between cowardice and recklessness; Generosity is the middle point between stinginess and extravagance. There is a right way, a middle point, between the indulgence of hedonia and the discipline of eudaimonia. We are not fully human if we do not enjoy our human pleasures to some degree. Without discipline, we too easily slip into all hedonia, all the time and accomplish nothing with our lives. With too much discipline we become gray puritans. A worthy life is also a happy life, walking the middle road, perhaps mostly embracing eudaimonia, but still making room for hedonia.  

1. the kids say, “YOLO” which means, “You only live once” and “FOMO”, which means “Fear of missing out”