Skip to content

Is Happiness the Goal?

2026-10-16 · letter vlog · Hank · 5:08 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Philosophy & meaning (also: Personal life) · mode: Personal essay

After joining John's Hollywood, Ending tour, Hank says he is not sure he wants to be happy: his frenetic making brings satisfaction, flow and the sense of being needed, but what he has been missing is space in his life to feel his actual emotions, joy or sadness; a nerdfighter's reply showed him his joy matters to the people he loves.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Thanks for the second-to-last Hollywood, Ending tour stop; memories of the 2017 Turtles tour and Pizzamas

  • ★★ Hank thanks John for having him along for the second-to-last stop of the Hollywood, Ending tour. — 00:00:00 · Hollywood, Ending, John Green
  • ★★ During the Hollywood, Ending show Hank kept thinking of all the brothers' past live events, and how weird, lucky and fun it is to get to do them. — 00:00:00 · Hollywood, Ending
  • ★★ On the 2017 Turtles tour Hank worked on the line edits for his book in the back of the tour bus. — 00:00:00 · Turtles All the Way Down
  • ★ Pizzamas 2017 ran at the same time as the Turtles tour; stopping at an almond orchard, the brothers decided they had time to edit a whole music video there. — 00:00:00 · Pizzamas

00:00:48 — Live events as a responsibility to create joy; last week's video; a half-joke on Bluesky

  • ★★ Recalling the brothers' first live events at libraries, Hank calls being put in charge of a couple of hours of people's time an honor, with the responsibility to create joy for others and for oneself. — 00:00:48
  • ★★ Hank says joy should be taken seriously: a show is no less serious because Dr. Lawrence Turtleman is there. — 00:00:48
  • ★★ Hank's video last week (week of 5 October 2026) was about how to stop thinking about making yourself do things and instead make the things you have to do into things you would do. — 00:01:17
  • ★★ Hank says that when something matters to him, he has a pretty good hit rate at making it into the kind of thing he does, even if at first it isn't. — 00:01:17
  • ★★ Chatting about this with people on Bluesky, Hank offhandedly joked that his next task was to figure out how to make his own joy matter to him. (playful) — 00:01:17

00:01:46 — Not sure he wants to be happy; Lee's reasons his own joy can matter

  • ★★★ Hank's joke answered a line he wrote, which he calls a pretty big deal: you will always struggle with not feeling productive until you accept that your own joy can be something you produce. — 00:01:46

    “you will always struggle with not feeling productive until you accept that your own joy can be something you produce”

  • ★★★ Hank says he is not sure he wants to be happy, and admits that sounds awful. (hedged) — 00:01:46

    “I'm not sure that I want to be happy.”

  • ★★ Hank says everyone knows things other than happiness are important to people: a better world, a safe and happy family, fulfilling all one's obligations, doing interesting things. — 00:01:46

  • ★★ Most of all, Hank says, people want to feel they matter, and such things can conflict with what simply makes you happy and delivers joy. — 00:02:16
  • ★★ Hank senses something deeper in his not wanting to be happy that is not good, beyond simply not experiencing a lot of joy. — 00:02:16
  • ★★ Lee (quoted): Answering Hank's joke, the nerdfighter Lee wrote that Hank's joy can matter to him because it matters to Katherine, Orin, John or whomever else. — 00:02:16 · Katherine Green, Orin Green, John Green
  • ★★ Lee (quoted): Lee also wrote that Hank's joy can matter to him because other things that matter are easier to engage with amid joy than amid misery. — 00:02:16
  • ★★ Lee (quoted): Lee added that Hank's joy can matter to him because nothing awaits him in the divine for resisting his own joy. — 00:02:16

00:02:58 — Frenetic making, flow and being needed; a week of small joys and bad news

  • ★★★ Answering Lee's reply, Hank says it matters so much to the people in his life that he is happy, they matter to him, and he wants what they want: a powerful frame he had not tapped into before. — 00:02:58
  • ★★ Hank says there is very little misery in his life: some, but not a lot. — 00:02:58
  • ★★★ What fills Hank's life is a frenetic attention to building, making, creating and maintaining, which he finds not necessarily joyful but positive and in a way enjoyable. — 00:02:58
  • ★★ Hank sometimes feels making things on the internet may be like a pianist playing a really difficult piece or a surfer hanging ten on a complex wave. (hedged) — 00:02:58
  • ★★★ Hank says making brings satisfaction: a feeling of flow, of knowing he is needed and doing something where he is effective and talented. — 00:03:48
  • ★★ Knowing you are needed feels a little like that elusive highest best purpose, Hank says, but it is not, and he thinks it is not deeply connected to joy or happiness. — 00:03:48
  • ★★ This morning Orin brought Hank to the couch to rate silly faces he had drawn on a scale of 1 to 10. — 00:03:48 · Orin Green
  • ★★ Last week (week of 5 October 2026) Hank got to sing We're Here Because We're Here with a thousand other people. — 00:03:48
  • ★★ In between, Hank got some bad news about a friend of his. — 00:03:48
  • ★★★ After a week of thinking about making what he produces matter to him, Hank says what he has been missing is not joy but something like existence in his heart: being outside of flow, feeling his actual emotions, joy or sadness. — 00:03:48

00:04:36 — What he misses is space to feel; thanks and sign-off

  • ★★★ Hank says he needs not just to be where he is needed or do what he is good at, but to create space in his life to feel: not just to feel joy, but to feel. — 00:04:36

    “Not just feel joy, but to feel.”

  • ★★ Hank admits he is not sure how to create space in his life to feel, a different and tricky challenge. (unsure) — 00:04:36

  • ★ Hank thanks viewers for letting him be vulnerable and John for an amazing show. — 00:04:36 · John Green

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: Happiness · joy

Also: People: Katherine Green · Lee · Orin Green

Projects: Pizzamas

Works: Hollywood, Ending · Turtles All the Way Down · We're Here Because We're Here

Organizations: Bluesky

Concepts: flow (psychology) · Line editing · productivity

Characters: Dr. Lawrence Turtleman

Also centred on Happiness: One Scientifically Proven Thing Actually Makes People Happier · Stress and Joy · Cause for Celebration

Also centred on joy: The ice we skate is getting pretty thin. · How Much Hope is OK?

Replies to

  • continues · The Productivity Lie — “something I've been thinking about a lot since I uploaded my video last week”

← Previous: My Lungs Are on the Outside of the Body · Next → Correcting a Mistake in Everything Is Tuberculosis · 50 x 50 Science