Happiness

Received the Summer Edition of Lapham's Quarterly called Happiness.  Nor sure what I was expecting, but am already drawn into the essays and excerpts.

A couple of interesting quotes:

A society devoted to self-gratification may, in the end, destroy the conditions of its own existence.

Avoid the pursuit of happiness.  Seek to define your mission and pursue that.

Happy people do not look at their watches.

She didn't want to know how a thing was done, but why.  That can be embarrassing.  You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed if you keep at it.

And one which has often entered my mind when thinking about happiness, from a Cheryl Crow song:

It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you have.

One might say that before the Declaration of Independence extolled the virtues of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, common men did not value happiness as a goal in itself, but rather thought that attaining certain goals would bring happiness as a byproduct.  Certainly, women and children were not actively in pursuit of happiness and they generally excepted what was prescribed by their elders as the path to a happy life.  For a women it meant motherhood, perhaps marriage to a successful man to accentuate their duty to bear children, but only in the recent past has love or happiness been a luxury they might pursue.  As for children, far too often their childhoods were marked by home labor on the farm, or slave wage labor when the industrialization of the modern world first occurred.

How things have changed in the past hundred years!.

Happiness is as much a marketing tool as a state of mind.  We allow our happiness to be defined for us, not by our parents, or husbands as before, but by the most clever ad men and con men. 

I have commented in past posts how the cost of living has changed so dramatically.  Where once we had party lines, then one phone per home, now anyone without their personal cell phone by the age of seven considers themselves ill used.  And at a cost of hundreds of dollars per month for the average family.

Where once we felt pride in being a two car family, perhaps the 2nd one being for local use only,  probably high mileage and well used by another before us,  now each driving age adult requires their own vehicle, in new or like new condition with comforts that many of us did not have in our homes when children.

Yet, for all these and so many other possessions, and items which have been sold to us as necessary for a happy life, the United States contains a seemingly unhappy population.

Suicide rates are on the increase, claiming over 45,000 people per year since 2016.  Not to mention those people who are unsuccessful at suicide, or who are leading lives marked by alcohol and drug abuse.  The use of tranquilizers and other drugs meant to help us "cope" is off the charts.  Gun violence claims over 40,000 Americans per year, (there is an overlap between gun deaths and suicides), placing America #1 in this dubious statistic among high income countries of the world.

So, while America continues to be a land of opportunity, a country with as many freedoms as most, a place where the melting pot of diversity in people and culture is as successful as any in history, in very many measurable areas, we are happy at a less than sterling percentage.

I have maintained very often that I would never want to win a big lottery payoff.  I imagine that winning $300 million would ruin my life although I must admit that perhaps $1 million would be nice.  Accumulating large sums of wealth, to me, seems to be a prescription for unhappiness, yet for so many people, a boatload of money is one of their dreams.  It seems so obvious that money cannot buy happiness, and I would imagine that a majority of Americans would agree with that notion, yet we act to the contrary in virtually everything we do.

We stay in jobs that we hate to maintain the paycheck.

We buy the newest and greatest products, thereby discarding those products which had previously replaced the old for the new, oblivious to the wheel we run that results in basements and attics and garages filled with the newest and greatest products of previous marketing campaigns.

We look in our overflowing closets and find nothing to wear, in our bursting pantries and refrigerators and find nothing to eat, on our TV channel guide and find nothing to watch, through our google inspired searches which lists dozens of activities and find nothing to do.

We are unhappy with the vast experiences which life offers us because we are unhappy with ourselves, and so we press on and buy more clothes and different foods, seek new stimulants and stimulations, but so often fail to enjoy them, as if by being able to possess or experience them, they lose their luster, become ordinary, because they were attainable in the first place.

Stop and smell the roses, isn't just about taking time out from the hectic pace of our lives, but about rejoicing in the mere presence of a rose, whether it be the first or thousandth we have seen and smelled.

I generally consider myself a happy person, despite the crying jags I experience from certain memories, certain feelings, certain emotions.  I don't believe that crying indicates unhappiness, merely the recognition of a sad or tearful event.  I sometimes wonder if the happiest people I know, those easy to laugh, who seem positive and less prone to sadness, also cry easily.  Perhaps, when all is said and done, those who laugh and cry the most are the happiest people because they can discern happy and sad experiences for what they are, and then allow themselves to feel the appropriate emotion when it is applicable to the situation, without fearing the vulnerability that can result from displaying emotions.

Perhaps, as darkness is the absence of light, yet without each the other cannot exist, sadness and happiness are linked in that both must exist for either one to be real.  That happiness and crying are not on opposite poles as are not sadness and laughing.

I will check back in as I continue to read "Happiness".