The opening line to Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” is frequently misunderstood to mean that all unhappy families are sadly similar in that negative dynamics are always present.

What Tolstoy and the original French proverb convey is that unhappy families suffer from unique dysfunctions, such as violence, substance abuse, or incest, while happy families have avoided these destructive traits.

In statistics, this concept is known as the ‘Anna Karenina Principle‘. It states that for an endeavor to be successful, every possible deficiency must be avoided, whereas for it to be unsuccessful, only one negative factor needs to be present.

A similar proverb from 16th or 17th-century Europe, “One bad apple spoils the whole barrel,” began as practical advice to apple farmers and evolved to describe how one negative influence can affect an entire group or family.

Russian authors like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky tend not to write about happy families because, in their view, there is no story, no moral, and no psychological depth without pain and suffering.

English author W. Somerset Maugham brought this idea back into the limelight with a twist when he wrote: “They say that happy people have no history, and certainly a happy love has none. They did nothing all day long and yet the days seemed all too short.”

There is no shame in happiness; life does not need drama or conflict to be meaningful.

Source: Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. Rain and Other South Sea Stories by W. S. Maugham. Graphic: Apple by Tembhekar. Public Domain.