More on Happiness and Tears

If you are like my wife and I, we have been watching the nightly reports from Ukraine and find the scenes of death and destruction heart rending.  The horrors of this invasion lend themselves to sadness, even tears if one imagines such an event happening to one's own family.  It is these kind of scenes that are being suppressed within Russia, and are most frequently removed when the reports of war are broadcast to the invading country.  

While in America we have a history of journalists who cover war in all its gory, and in fact, sometimes leads to protests against wars we have waged, such as the details of atrocities that were occasionally committed by US soldiers in Vietnam to name, perhaps, the most vivid experience that the American public had to face, it is also true that even here, the details of the murder of civilians in those countries which we invaded, Iraq and Afghanistan being the most recent examples, were far too often watered down or outright hidden from the nightly news reports.  

My point here is that war is brutal, always has been, always will be, and regardless of the patriotism of a country's justification for sending troops to another country, woman, children and the elderly are always victims, unintended or not, of such invasions.  In the end, it doesn't matter if a bomb hits a home by mistake or on purpose, in either case, noncombatants are maimed and killed, and families are destroyed. 

As such, these kinds of stories generally lose their luster.  After the initial interest, sort of like the tendency to look out the window as we pass an accident, looking to see if there is a body, while hoping not to see one, coverage of wars begin to alter.  More stories of hope amidst the turmoil emerge, or even stories depicting some kind of normalcy returning bit by bit.  For good or bad, we stop tuning in to see bodies and to hear about death statistics.  And that is good, in a way, as it demonstrates that most of us do not seek destruction, do not believe that violence is a preferable path to peace and prosperity.  But it is also bad, because just because we stop looking, it doesn't end the destruction.  The horrors of the war continue, we just stop paying attention. We become numb to avoid the tears even though the tears continue to run from the eyes of war's victims.

And so, in the face of a choice between acknowledging that war is never good for the civilians of a country, but wanting not to see it when we wage war against the people of a country whom our leaders have designated as evil or bad or even just not like us, how does one stay happy?  Maintain a positive outlook? 

I have posted twice on this topic in the past.  The first was written in June of 2019. In it I discuss that one could argue that up until just very recently in human history, the pursuit of happiness did not exist, at least not as we know it today.  And, more importantly, how our current definition of happiness seems inexorably, and most detrimentally, linked to material possessions. The link is below.

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2019/06/happiness.html

The second was written in September 2019 and the link follows.  In that post, I am more specifically commenting on the concept of seeking and achieving personal happiness while acknowledging the global anxieties that surround us. I end the post on a positive note, a positive conclusion, with the decision that not only can both exist, personal happiness and global anxiety, but that perhaps, both should exist in all of us.  That by recognizing the reasons for our own happiness, our privileges us well as our achievements, we become more able to address the situations and circumstances of those who reside in other parts of the world, become more able to turn our empathy for their hardships into actions which might help them alleviate those obstacles. That perhaps we can only be better world citizens if we are happy people. 

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2019/09/personal-happiness-vs-global-anxiety.html

I am not sure how getting older is effecting my relationship with happiness and tears.  Certainly, I am feeling more satisfied with my current life. Being retired has removed a considerable amount of stress from my world.  Having the luxury to sit and read whenever and for however long I wish, or to just take off and visit friends or family without juggling work schedules is liberating.  But as we age, the passing of friends, family, or even just names which remind us of our youth or good times of the past, bring all the more reasons for tears.  Add to that the inevitable tendency to see our past through rose colored glasses, and it can be hard not to feel nostalgia for times past and dissatisfaction for today's changes.

In the end, I guess it is best to relish the happiness in our lives while evaluating the sadness that permeates the world so as to be able to distinguish between tears we should shed, and tears we should work to eliminate by extending some of our personal happiness into the world at large, and the lives of others less fortunate.