James D. Watson, a co-discoverer of DNA, knows why some Duke Students are sad: they are thin.
According to one of the most brilliant scientists of the last century, fat people are happier, have more endorphins, and are less stressed because they make gallons of leptin, a hormone related to feelings of well-being, which rises in proportion to the quantity of fat cells that one has, perhaps suggesting that--contrary to what your mother may have told you--happiness may not be finite after all. In an illuminating interview with the paper Scotland on Sunday he fleshed out this idea: "My guess is that your mood is determined by your internal endorphins. And you make more of these when you're fat. Hence, no one has ever drawn Santa Claus thin. Why? Again you can say convention, but how did the convention come about? Thin people are discontented."
And he does seem right on that count. Skinniness and nervousness, in this writer's experience, do seem positively correlated, to say the least, and he goes on to give a description that all too perfectly fits those tormented by the demons of effortless perfection. "Thin people are so driven by the need to find that elusive happiness that they become overachievers. Heavier people are more mellow and less successful." While the slur against the prospects for success for the obese is unnecessary, his evolutionary argument in support of thin people being edgy resonates. In earlier times, starvation constituted the greatest threat to human survival. Thus, the hungry organism is always in a state of restless excitation, ever looking for the next meal, feeling on some level that the end is near. Heavier humans, conversely, do not have the same instinctual restlessness because their bodies realized that, if deprived of food for a time, they could endure. Watson comments: "Happiness does depend on having some fat on, so that women who are constantly reducing are great for the drug companies because they have to take Prozac." And he continues with his utopian vision, this time to the Daily Telegraph: "I am trying to convince the world that the secret to happiness lies in fat women."
And as if happiness weren't a sufficient incentive to gain weight, it turns out that Watson's investigation has uncovered another perk to added poundage: sexual vigor. He says: "Thinness is never associated with sexuality." "When you see two thin people together, you know they've got problems."
These discoveries have profound significance for the hungry college student. They may help us understand why so many feel constantly pressured and driven, and--moreover--why institutions like Duke attract so many skinny folks in the first place. We need to understand that these tumultuous feelings of deprivation are what give lives the frenetic energy and restlessness that allows for achievement, but also the chronic dissatisfaction that denies happiness. Successful students are, by definition, ascetic. We are good in school because we are able to delay gratification, but of what good is a life devoid of gratification?
Ultimately the debate reduces to a question of values. We have to choose between being a productive, successful martyr, like Nikola Tesla, who reputedly worked twenty hours a day throughout his adult life, and twenty-two as a student, or being a dedicated hedonist, looking constantly for momentary pleasures, or--and this is the best course--averaging the two and becoming normal. If any sense at all can be made of philosophy, it is that many philosophers most of the time advocate some personalized version of the "middle path," suggesting that temperance and the mean ought to be our desired destination, rather than the poles. But in the end each of us must make our own decision: Do we want professional triumph more than a family? Self-satisfaction more than a social life? We must answer these questions in a manner that will be consistent with the people we want to be on our deathbeds in eighty years, because, according to Grandpop, living life "backwards" is the best way to discover what is important.
And for those who decide to renounce the path of the ascetic martyr, there is the inimitable Dr. Watson bearing the following prescription: gain weight, gain libido, and--if you are pasty--get a tan since, as he says: "The people who are hottest sexually are fat white people who are burning in the sun."
Matthew Gillum is a Trinity junior. His column appears every third Friday.
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