Quest for happiness

Posted on by Vincent

I argued with Charles Bergeman a while ago on the topic of happiness: whether, for example, a five-year-old child could have said to its teacher something like: “I don’t want to be anything when I grow up, I just want to be happy.”

I said it didn’t ring true and then I promised to write a post about it, and drafted many words, and brooded further for some days in my various spaces for brooding (too many? too few?); and sometimes when I awoke in the night, between 2 and 4am, I might have stared in the dark at happiness, and wondered.

All the while, I knew I would only write about happiness authentically whilst seizing the moment, sinking into the indefinable nowness of now, rather than spiralling off into ideas—those seductive liars.

At first I was convinced that happiness had no single definition, or was a complex idea that meant nothing independent of a context. In other words, I was thinking like a philosopher, and it had to stop. But after some while, when I was just about to cross Victoria Street one bright morning, alert to everything that could be perceived with the senses, I saw that happiness is the simplest of ideas. “I am happy” means “I wouldn’t change a thing.” For now is just right; or taking a wider scope, my life is just right.

Having agreed with myself this definition, it came as a shock to realize that happiness, in certain circumstances, can be a decision.

I’m writing this in bed. There’s a picture on the wall, the most successful of the few pastels I attempted; it depicts a cloud just above the horizon. I’m happy with it being hung there, the positioning of it, even (though it’s very amateurish) the execution of the painting, and so on. But I could easily not be happy with it. It’s probably hung slightly crooked; it deserves a better frame, one with glass; I ought to try it again in watercolour, for I’d found it very difficult in pastel. Any of these objections could prevent me being happy with this picture hanging in my bedroom. If I wasn’t so happy with the bedroom itself, my objections to the picture might carry some weight.

But I’m happy with this bedroom. It’s cosy, perfect. It’s sequestered and dwells in stillness; and yet it’s connected to the world. Through the open window, I can hear the street, whose sounds vary through the day and night. I can hear my beloved downstairs, but distantly. We are both happy with the picture, the bedroom, the house, our entwined lives. That is, we are not driven by the need to change anything. Most of the time.

I’ll confess to you that when I feel the need to change something, it’s urgent, as if my life were threatened. I leap into action like a man possessed; and if in the nature of things there is no action I can take, I pray, consciously or otherwise.

I do think happiness is a miracle. It must not be taken for granted. Is it something I have finally learned? Or is it a gift? A big question: perhaps the question, through the ages.

As a child and still as an adult, till the last few years, I was profoundly unhappy, so my life was a system of stratagems to carry on as if nothing were wrong at all. I even started, in these pages, these posts, to write a series of memoirs consisting of all the happy memories with the other parts left out. I calculated that it might have worked till the age of eighteen.

By sheer coincidence, I’ve been given two almost identical cases to take care of: one from my late headmaster’s daughter, with school photos; one more recently with family photos. The family case has been haunting me, to the extent that I want to put everything back and shut the lid tight, except that the legend of Pandora’s box says that you can’t. “When she opened it, all of the evils, ills, diseases, and burdensome labour that mankind had not known previously, escaped from the box.”

Who knows? Perhaps happiness is the butterfly, the imago form, whose existence requires the larva and pupa stages. Or perhaps, as I strongly suspect, the spiritual life is an escape mechanism for the soul which finds itself blocked from more earthly fulfilment in the formative years.

And, when I don’t feel threatened by the world outside my skin, it seems that happiness is something I am able to choose. But could a five-year-old child possibly know that?

27 thoughts on “Quest for happiness”

  2. don't forget that hope remained behind when the ills escaped into the world…

    preparing for my 2 week seminar in shamanic healing I've been thinking/reading deeply about spiritual matters. Seems that what you are talking about might be connected to the “be here now” (to use the popularized phrase) notion – which at it's heart seems to be about complete acceptance of the given moment as being perfect.

    authenticity, being fully present in the now, fully accepting the world as given – all practices that are supposed to lead to happiness.

    Reading this feels like reading my other books backwards: they start with a practice and end with happiness. You started with happiness and then stretched a description around it.

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  4. I would prefer to characterize our happiness dialogue as a discussion rather than an argument.

    I have found that many of my “discussions” with Vincent in the past, have resulted in a meeting of the minds, rather than a disagreement.

    Perception is skewed by perspective. The perspective of a 5 year old is different from that of a mature adult.

    My post was based on a question put to a child regarding what they would like to be when they grow up.

    The child chose to be happy, vs. choosing a profession.

    I would “argue” that the perspective of that child would skew their understanding of what it means to be a fireman, police officer, teacher, or soldier as much as it would their understanding of happiness.

    So, does it make it more reasonable for a child to choose a profession? Is the person posing the question projecting their values on the child, by anticipating proper responses?

    I do think you have hit on something Vincent. We can choose happiness over the alternative.

    However, what I object to more, is when others insist that I choose the same way they have.

    I am not obligated to focus on the negatives that others observe. I may see them as unimportant, or immaterial to my appreciation of the subject.

    This is not to say that I am intentionally naive. Rather, I prefer not to dwell on certain things while others may feel that I must.

    The predominance of focus on the negative, in the media, and among many of my associates, has always been tiresome for me. I am quick to deflect attempts to wallow in negativity.

    Happiness, contentment, are for me a lifestyle choice. One that I have found serves me well.

    Even as a child. I remember when my Grandfather died, my parents, and the other kids began fighting over trivial things they wanted from the estate.

    I drifted into my Grandfather's office. I Sat in his chair at his desk, and thought about him, and the times I sat on his lap while he typed up something on his old typewriter.

    I gathered some worn pencils from his desk and a few office supplies that I thought I could use.

    I spent the rest of the day playing in the yard. Happy with the memories I shared with him, unconcerned about the material things he left behind.

    I was a child then (about 7), but I share those sentiments today.

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  5. Charles, what sometimes interests me in discussing things with you is to wonder at your choice of words. “Happiness, contentment, are for me a lifestyle choice.”

    But Charles! they do not constitute a lifestyle. To choose happiness and contentment does not prevent someone from being for example a bomb-disposal officer.

    In the more general sense everyone chooses happiness, that is to say they pursue whatever it is strikes them as the way to scratch their itch.

    I feel that I know what you want to say, and agree with it. But I cannot help but argue with what you actually say.

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  6. A reader wrote this comment and subsequently deleted it:

    “sorry to say this. but the fact that you have written in your blog about whether a five year old child would ask her teacher if she would want nothing but happiness is so laughable, pathetic and height of joblessness that i am compelled to write this comment. and i reserve my comment on the fact that you have passionate debate about this issue with somebody.

    “if you already don't know what a five year old would say, i would guide you through — if the child is from a reasonably good family, she will ask for lots of candies and toys. if she is from a really poor family she would want to eat whatever she loves now. in short, very materialistic choices.

    “ ‘I don’t want to be anything when I grow up, I just want to be happy.’ is such abysmal a sentence for a five year old that i am thinking of not reading your blog anymore if you bombard us with any such toxic waste anymore.”

    But G– (I’m not sure if you want to be associated with the comment now), this was the reason I was arguing with Charles, who had quoted the anecdote with seeming approval on his blog. My response was equally one of disbelief; but sometimes I continue an argument with someone in my own head, and it leads to a new understanding.

    Your five-year-old sounds like a child in an Indian (perhaps a Bengali) family, not one that I recognise from my personal experience. It reminds me of your tales of Piklu, which reflect a culture as much as they reflect a child's behaviour.

    What Charles originally posted, in quotation marks to make it clear it was not something he had written himself, was this:

    “ When I was 5 years old, my mom always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

    I gave him a pretty negative response to the above, feeling that if it has come to this, in any part of the world, then we have reached a low ebb. But Charles and I speak a different language, and I don't know if he will understand what I mean. He appears to think that the desire for happiness (surely universal by definition) is something that has to be explicitly acknowledged and stated publicly in front of one’s classmates and teacher as a different lifestyle choice than a career. I cannot make any sense of this.

    Unless I am mistaken, teachers of young children may ask questions of their pupils as part of the process of teaching forms of communication, verbal or written. It’s also likely and almost inevitable that a teacher’s teaching will reinforce the prevailing values of the society sponsoring the school. This is something that every child in every age has to endure.

    No five-year-old child will fight that, even if brainwashed to do so by the repetitious suggestion of aparent.

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  7. Hayden, I saw that bit about hope remaining behind in the Wikipedia article I plagiarised, but it didn't ring true any more than a happy ending stuck on to the end of King Lear.

    I'm glad you see what I wrote as like those books, backwards. That is exactly what I want to do—reverse the order.

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  8. V, as to your first remark, that an idle mind is afraid, there may be much in what you say.

    As to your second: “A five-year-old is just like his parents. Education doesn't make him less ambitious and greedy.” —I will have to say that this blog is often an enemy to the sweeping generalization. I feel there may be something behind what you say, but (if you'll excuse me for putting it this way) you have not said it.

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  9. Vincent, our discussions often are fraught with such frustrations.

    I do not have the mastery of language that you (and perhaps others who read your blog) have.

    Since we are communicating through words, I am at a distinct disadvantage. I am, by my own nature, a visual communicator.

    I hope, by my inept attempt at communicating via my blog post, and your subsequent response, I have not damaged your reputation.

    I am pleased that I inspired you to post, but dismayed that I may have caused some of your readers to react badly.

    Perhaps if I had your abilities I could more clearly identify the motivation behind my post. My intentions have not been well understood. I am sure this is my fault, but I am not clear, at this time, how I might make amends.

    I will consider it longer. Perhaps I can follow up with another post that will state it more clearly.

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  10. Happiness seems like more of an excitement of thought than relaxing into contentment, could the relation of the two expose response abilities?
    The threat of non-response is the symptom discontent but he seemed happy to deny attention…

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  11. Charles, reputation is not what concerns me here, but an obstinate quest to pursue important matters.

    I am not sure that our difficulties are to do with mastery of language or otherwise. I have often found that a David can fell a Goliath with whatever comes to hand.

    We have reasons to obfuscate. If a child says “I want to be happy”, it has been taught to use such an expression, as in your quote, for there it had been schooled by the mother's repetitions. In the absence of such teaching, it could express itself just as well, or better, with tears. No one says “I want to be happy” without the awareness “Actually, I am not happy.”

    To understand your quotation, one must ignore the suggestion that this is someone's memory from five years old. that part is pure fable, constructed by the adult in hindsight. In saying “I want to be happy” as opposed to answering the teacher's (or adult society's) question, the creator of the fable is opposing the individual's simple desire against society's creation of an economic monstrosity which doesn't approve of citizens who reject its rules: that you have to be a producer of goods or services in order to survive, regardless of the surplus of goods and services already there, and regardless of the misery inherent (for some sensitive souls) in participation in such economic activity.

    I think the above is somehow meant to be implicit in that quotation about the child, and that you saw that implication in the quotation without regard for the objections that G– and I have brought up.

    What's the answer? I don't know. I think it's the price we pay for this kind of communication. Personally I would not like to trust someone else's words to express my own thought.

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  12. Dear Charles,
    that G is nothing bu ghetufool. yes, i wrote that but subsequently deleted, but when Vincent wanted to publish it again, i didn't say no. cause i was clear that i didn't want my views to expressed in this way, which is very rude. but that's me, i don't have the mastery in language. i am even poor in english. it's an acquired language.
    we all blog to let our views known to — ourselves. in my case, it's not the readers that i write for, i write for only myself. cause you tell lies to your self when you are thinking something and deciding on the basis of that. but writing is sacred to me, i use my imagination. but i don't lie there. and i like to see some opposite views from people. diversity is very interesting to find. that person may not tell his mind to you when you communicate, but when he is writing, he will show his real character. i think we should embrace this sportingly. it's fun.
    besides, it's not your fault about that sentence. vincent mislead us, he didn't write the whole sentence. he just wrote a part. thank god that i commented, he had to reveal the whole thing, which i think is a bit reasonable. don't get cross buddy. we will never meet, but we have a relationship through this blog. spirituality baffles me, it irritates me. so i don't read your or others' blog who comment here. i started reading vincet's blog when he was noth that spiritual. now i cannot dump him, though i wish to.

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  13. Brad4d, “Happiness seems like more of an excitement of thought than relaxing into contentment, could the relation of the two expose response abilities?” – Well, I disagree with your generalization, for who are you or I to say what constitutes happiness, since there are billions of people with different notions about it: which might be different on different days and will certainly change as they get older.

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  14. Ghetufool, I don't wish to be spiritual, but some readers do, in this confused part of the world where the topic is in crisis, and I cannot help but be interested. You are right that I misled, in the interests of brevity.

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  18. brad4d, I see you are a contentment consultant, & know much more about these matters than I. Still, it doesn't put me off, & I might write more on the topic in my next.

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  19. Happiness is lots and lots of mental energy. Relationships waste a lot.
    The mind is Pandora's box. The mind, brain, heart, and body are one.

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  21. Charles, with you all the way. You have helped me learn too. & I confirm that apart from occasional aberrations, it's not the intention here to sacrifice integrity for attempts at wit; nor to debate, if debating means jousting to win.

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  23. Vincent, Your post is aptly titled -Pandora's Box- as it appears to have generated lot of comments. Accepting things as they are or being contented with whatever circumstances one finds oneself in or can get into easily, is undiubtedly a path to great happiness.

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