Opinion | Want to be happy? Then don't be a lawyer.

July 07, 2024

It might surprise few that lawyers are the unhappiest people on the planet, at least when it comes to their jobs. This is according to lawyers themselves and is the conclusion of a recent analysis by The Post of data on America’s happiest and unhappiest workers.

Chalk up lawyers’ malaise to high levels of stress and a lack of “meaningfulness” in their work. This doesn’t mean all lawyers dislike their jobs, but data doesn’t lie (even if some lawyers sometimes do). I should mention that a significant number of my family members have been and are attorneys.

This analysis was done by Andrew Van Dam, who, speaking of meaningful employment, delves into vast databanks to answer questions posed by readers. In this case, he examined thousands of journals from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey to find out who’s happy and who isn’t.

Beneath all this data is perhaps a more important question: What is happiness?

Follow this authorKathleen Parker's opinions

As a teenager, I once asked my lawyer-father whether he was happy. Pursing his lips, he thought for a moment, then said, “For some people, happiness is the absence of stress.” I assumed he was referring to himself. He also said in another conversation that he thrived on stress, from which I concluded that life is often contradictory. His answer, nonetheless, was consistent with the survey findings — the less the stress, the greater the happiness.

The happiest, least stressful, most meaningful jobs in America

So, who are the happy devils who love their jobs? Envelope, please. And the winners are: lumberjacks, foresters and farmers.

The common denominator among the three is obvious. They all work primarily outdoors, soloists communing with nature far removed from the white-collar stresses of desk life and paperwork. Farmers live intimately with the earth, tilling and smelling the soil, planting, tending and harvesting crops, and ending each day with the satisfaction of having accomplished something meaningful. They feed the world.

Likewise, foresters oversee wooded land with an eye toward conservation. They work to simultaneously sustain ecosystems and mitigate climate change. A single 30-foot tree can store hundreds of pounds of carbon dioxide during its lifetime and even thereafter when used for housing or furniture, according to the Agriculture Department.

Lumberjacks, the ultimate tree-huggers, harvest trees for housing, furniture and other consumer products. They’re also partly responsible for deforestation, it must be said, but they, too, enjoy their work and apparently suffer little stress.

What doesn’t show up in the analysis are any metaphysical reasons such workers are happy. I would submit that it’s because they spend their time close to nature. In my experience, living attuned to Earth’s cycles and seasons — and I don’t mean shopping for outerwear online — has a salubrious effect on body, mind and soul. Thus, Tibetan monks build monasteries on remote mountaintops. Henry David Thoreau lived alone for two years in a tiny shack he built overlooking Walden Pond. And many people find a renewed sense of self and purpose through wilderness programs such as Outward Bound and the National Outdoor Leadership School. Nature works wonders.

City dwellers might say that they experience nature in urban ways — by spending a day in a park, perhaps. Or, on vacation, they get to observe the ebbs and flows of oceans, rivers and lakes. To see wildlife, they can go to a zoo. But such bystander adaptations sidestep the essential point: It’s one thing to observe the natural world; it’s quite another to be a part of it.

Most people, apparently, are fine with observing. Today, 83 percent of Americans live in urban areas. Globally, 56 percent of the world’s population, or 4.4 billion people, live in cities, according to the World Bank. By 2050, 7 in 10 humans will trade nature’s hum for the city’s arias.

The reasons for this migratory trend are obvious and sensible: jobs, entertainment, restaurants, theater, shopping and all the other wondrous things only cities can provide. But the downsides aren’t inconsequential — crowds, traffic, noise, pollution and loss of physical space are assaults on the senses. Human beings are animals, too, we sometimes forget, and this is when we get into trouble. No wonder so many children and adults are being medicated for anxiety.

On a more mundane level, the draw of the city exacerbates the urban-rural divide and surely promises even greater political polarization. The issues that concern city dwellers and country folk are as different from each other as lawyers and lumberjacks.

Given that one of those groups is happier than the other, I can’t help wondering what the exodus from rural habitats to urban mazes portends for our humanity.

I do know that when I’m alone in the woods where I currently live, keeping an eye on the hawks and an ear to the breeze, I am calm and untroubled. Oh, sure, I enjoy city life like anyone and make frequent forays — from which, stressed by traffic and too many people, I happily retreat to the woods. As soon as this column is done, I’m going to chop some firewood, plant some trees and potatoes, and probably evolve into a higher life form. See you on the mountaintop.

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