How important is happiness?
There was a series of days where I was obsessed with happiness, morning to night, and I am afraid that that whole time I did nothing of import. Oh I imported for sure! Thoughts, ideas, feelings and fleeting notions—stretched over hours—into my mind, but I now recognize that as a state of Consumption. And I did very little else…
The greatest desire in my heart at that time was to be happy, and I sought it in the littlest, oddest places—the easiest to reach, for what is more counter to happiness than hardship? Hah. The fear of unhappiness and hardship nested in my heart in those days like the fear of god! Coming to me, paralytically, in the most comfortable places, the most private and secure… late at night, wondering, fearing… it even came when I was in the most productive, the most doing of places, and stymied all nonessential doing with the incessant question “when will I ever be happy?”
Not “what is happiness?” or “what is the source of my happiness?” No. Instead a nonsensical question with its predicate—the words “be happy”—as empty and meaningless as if I had said “when will I ever—?” A question unanswerable by nature, that rightly paralyzed me. One that, if anything, meant nothing more than whatever definition I had inherited for “happiness.” That whole mess of overlapping ideas about achievement, friendship, companionship, productivity, money, material goods, fulfilment, community… A question, more pointedly, that assumed I should think of happiness at all.
“for only the animal laborens [the consumer and laborer], and neither the craftsman nor the man of action, has ever demanded to be ‘happy’ or thought that mortal men could be happy.” -Hannah Arendt, the Human Condition.[1]
And quite rightly so my dear Arendt. It is only I, the child of labor, who treats their emotions the same as their stomach—yet still believes happiness to be lasting—that demands to somehow eat at last enough of the bread of happiness to finally be full. But just like with hunger, I do now begin to think that I may only at last stop craving happiness when I am dead in my grave. When “life’s process[es] of exhaustion and regeneration…strike a perfect balance” at last…[2]
I suppose that was the “happiness” I had inherited in sum: to no longer be a living thing that needs. To be so surrounded by fulfilment of every type as to never need, and so to be always fulfilled and happy. Yet as a living thing, no matter the sophistication or completeness of my methods of fulfilment, I will always occasionally need and occasionally be fulfilled. Fulfilment is never even. But whichever state I am in, needy or fulfilled, I know now it does not change who I am—that my needs and I are not the same thing. So it is high time, I think, that I claimed my right to those other modes of human life, the doing and the making, and began to ask questions of things far more lasting and consequential than fulfilment.
So, “what is my happiness?” Now that is a good question. I answer it thus: my happiness is not particularly important. No, misery is not my aim, nor is unfulfillment, but happiness? In 5 years? 5 months? What a ridiculous question. I will do what I want and happiness will follow, or not. Either way, what is it to worry about? My dream of fulfilment, of perfect future happiness, will only put me to sleep—and leave me gripped by nightmares! That really is not how happiness works and it has been vain of me to assume otherwise. There is much more to life than happiness, and it would do me well to remember that when I worry about happiness. For I will probably be walking down the street one day, not thinking at all of happiness, and then suddenly find it right around the corner! And I most likely will not find it worrying over it late into the night between these four corners.
So answer the question as you will… but do not forget all the other things there are to think about. So many questions so much more pointed and kinder than my foolish “when will I ever be happy?” No, now here are some questions far more interesting than happiness… and perhaps ones that may lead you down the street where happiness waits to ambush you from a side alley:
“What do I, in the depths of my soul, want to be? What will I do to be that person? What is it good to do? What do I wish to make?”
[1] Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 2018. Pg. 134. (Originally published 1958).
[2] Arendt, The Human Condition. Pg. 134.
