Difficult Choice: To Live Longer or Be Happier?

People are craving for happiness rather than long lifespan. Meetville.com (dating app to find the right person) released a poll from 10/28/14 to 1/21/15, where it asked people to respond to the question: “Would you be willing to shorten your life, if it meant being a happier person?” Only 31% prefer a longer but not so joyful life.

Participants numbered 35,202, representing the following countries: the USA – 53%, Canada – 4%, Britain – 15%, Australia – 7% and other countries – 21%.

For centuries people have been wondering what is happiness. The researches suggest that happiness is a mixture of your overall satisfaction with life (finding meaningful job or true love) and how you feel on a daily basis. According to Mark Williamson, Director of Action for Happiness - a movement of people taking action to create a happier society, “Happiness relates to how we feel, but it is more than just a passing mood. We are emotional beings and experience a wide range of feelings on a daily basis.” But it is impossible to be in a good mood all the time. Every person feels anger, fear or sadness once in a while. “Trying to live a happy life is not about denying negative emotions or pretending to feel joyful all the time. We all encounter adversity and it’s completely natural. Happiness is about being able to make the most of the good times – but also to cope effectively with the inevitable bad times, in order to experience the best possible life overall,” adds Mark Williamson.

Alex Cusper, Meetville service analyst, believes that it’s not easy to define happiness. It’s an elusive and subjective thing. Like all the other things in our life, how happy you are totally depends on how you choose to live your life and what priorities you choose.

Meetville, a leading mobile dating service, regularly conducts research among its users. Millions of people from the U.S., Canada, Britain and Australia answer hundreds of questions every month. You can find the results of the poll here. If you are interested in research on a particular topic, please contact us. Any reprint of the material should be followed by clickable links to the survey.