Happy? Why does everyone have to be happy all the time?
— Doc Martin, S6E7
This blog post was inspired by a conversation with Fran in which she mentioned asking a friend, “Are you happy?” After what I imagine was a moment’s hesitation her friend answered, “Sometimes yes. Sometimes no.” I smiled at the answer but it reminded me of something I struggle with a lot. We take for granted that everyone uses words in the same way. This is fine when we’re discussing material things or events. If I told you I spent six hours in my local coffee shop working on this blog post, you’d know what I meant. If I said I enjoyed myself you’d nod, relating my use of enjoyed to situations you’d label with the same word. But we don’t necessarily use it in the same way. We might label distinctly different emotions with the same word, and use different labels for essentially the same experience.
I told Fran that if she was to ask me “Are you happy?” I’d first have to think about what that word means to me (what emotions or situations I’d label with the word happy) and then whether it was true of how I was feeling at the time. This presents a further challenge. I find it difficult to label and express my emotional states, as I’ve described previously in How Do I Feel Now? Living With Alexithymia.
“Dont ask me if I’m happy,” Fran said.
I assured her I wouldn't. “I mistrust happiness,” I continued after a moment. “It seems ... I don’t know how to say it.”
“Contrived?” Fran suggested.
“Not exactly. But superficial somehow. Fleeting.”
I thought of the sine wave analogy Fran uses to describe the dynamic nature of her health conditions. Translating that into the emotional space, I see happiness as the up swings. The peaks. Occasional. Impermanent. Transitory. I wrote about this in my 2021 post Return to Down.
I’ve always believed my emotional and mental health baseline to be essentially positive and healthy. Things might happen at times to upset my equilibrium, but after a shorter or longer period I return to my place of stability and wholeness. Lately, though, this model has been turned on its head. Instead of events and situations disturbing me from an essentially healthy baseline, it feels as though my baseline itself has shifted downwards. Positive events and situations such as meeting up with a friend, or feedback on one of my blog posts [...] can lift me up, lighten my mood, or provide an alternative focus for a while. But, once the distraction has passed, I’m pulled back to this low mood baseline.
Why do we place such emphasis on being happy? We routinely wish happiness for ourselves and others. Happy Birthday. Happy Christmas. Happy New Year. The loving kindness meditation includes “May you be happy” in its four part mantra. “I wish you nothing but happiness” is common expression of goodwill. I’ve used it myself. And yet, on reflection, it appals me. Nothing but happiness would be stifling. Arid. And they all lived happily ever after? No thank you! The ups and downs are what give life meaning. Living solely in the happy zone — were that even possible — would lack everything that makes life meaningful to me. My friend Jen expressed this well in a recent conversation. “Being happy all the time just doesn’t feel real,” she said. “Who can be happy 24/7? Life can come at you in so many different ways.”
In the 1989 movie Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Kirk refuses the offer to have his pain erased. “Pain and guilt can’t be taken away with the wave of a magic wand,” he protests. “They’re the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don’t want my pain taken away. I need my pain!”
I don’t want to be happy. I want to be creatively engaged. Challenged. Fulfilled. The day of our “Are you happy?” conversation Fran drew two Angel cards. For herself she drew Adventure. For her friend, Contentment. I’d have been happy (irony noted) to have drawn either of those for myself. I might eschew happiness as a permanent state of being but I’m not as dour and miserable as that makes me seem. (I may not be the best judge of this!) I declare myself happy from time to time. So, what makes me happy?
In 2022 I wrote about four of my Happy Places. These are places my heart has been at ease. Places I’ve felt at home. Places I’ve enjoyed on my own but also shared with people close to me. Two of them — Langrigg and Stack Newcastle — are no longer available but my thoughts and heart still wander there. As a friend once reminded me, “You will always have your good memories. And so will I.”
Music can make me happy, either in itself or because of the memories it evokes. Songs that spring to mind are Hammer and a Nail by the Indigo Girls, Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’, Lisa Hannigan’s I Don’t Know, Turn It On Again by Genesis, Sniff ’n’ the Tears’ Driver’s Seat, The Irish Rover by The Dubliners and The Pogues, Paul Simon’s You Can Call Me Al, and Pharrell Williams’ 2014 classic, Happy. For more of my favourites check out Ten Anthems for Comfort, Celebration, Inspiration, and Healing and Twelve Songs That Remind Me What Caring Is All About.
Good times spent with good people make me happy. An inveterate list maker, I once compiled a list of people who can lift my mood by simply entering the room or reaching out to me online. I won’t embarrass them — or myself — by sharing the list here but I will mention Bridget who spotted me in Costa Coffee recently and came over to say hello. We hadn’t seen each other in years but it was the single most purely happy moment I’ve experienced in a long time. Thank you, Bridget! The happiness I felt in that moment was wholesome but I’ve learned to mistrust my emotional responses to people whose company I enjoy. I have another list, of people I’ve confused, upset, or worried over the years by being overly attentive or reading more into those “happy feelings” than was warranted or wanted. There are names which appear on both lists. Perhaps it’s me. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that I’ve been doing happiness wrong all this time. If so, is there anything I can do about it?
A friend shared with me recently that he’d had what he termed an epiphany. “I’ve decided to be happy,” he told me. It left me wondering. Is being happy a decision we make? An act we perform? An aspect of our response to events, people, and situations? Is happiness something we can learn? Is it something I could learn?
I consider another list. Happy People I Know. Not the shiny happy people R.E.M. sang about (the song has been described as summery and optimistic, and “so good that it will make you too want to go around and give the world a great big hug”) but people who are genuinely happy. It’s a difficult list to compile because we know so little of what others are feeling or dealing with. How many of us hide our true — and fundamentally unhappy — selves behind masks of laughter, smiles, and engagement?
Social media undoubtedly plays a role in our perception of happiness. As one friend pointed out to me, people “like to project happiness on social media. ‘I’m doing this and therefore I’m happy.’” I thought about that. It depends to some extent on who you follow. Most of the people I know online share something of their lows — their difficulties and stresses, the unhappy bits — as well as their successes, holidays, and celebrations. The good stuff and the not so good. We all curate what we share, online and off. Consciously or otherwise, we cultivate the versions of our lives we want others to know. I see that as necessary aspect of social media. It can be hard, though, to witness other people’s happiness when we’re unhappy, struggling, or alone.
Many things that make other people happy do little or nothing for me. Travel. Football. Sport in general. Hiking. Going to the gym. Swimming. Parties. Music festivals. Dancing. (I don’t dance, although the memory of dancing with one friend is very high on my list of happy times). Despite not wanting to do these things myself, I love that other people do and share their experiences doing so. I mostly share photos taken on my lunchtime walks and at the coffee shop where I do most of my writing. My friends and followers seem to enjoy seeing them. I get a warm feeling when someone likes my posts or leaves a comment. My deeper thoughts and experiences are shared through my blog posts. (If you want to know me better, make sure you subscribe to our blog!)
I don’t know where my arguably jaundiced take on happiness originated. I’ve felt this way for as long as I can remember. I’d characterise my childhood as comfortable rather than happy. I read a great deal. Watership Down. Duncton Wood. Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series. Alan Garner. Later, The Lord of the Rings and Stephen Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Not much happiness there!
I studied the poetry of Thomas Hardy as part of my GCSE English Literature syllabus. I failed the examinations but retained my interest in his work and his outlook on life. The latter is most clearly expressed in the poem To An Unborn Pauper Child. I can still recite most of it from memory. After describing the “travails and teens” of the world into which the infant will soon make its “ignorant entry” the poet acknowledges there’s nothing he can do to mitigate the peril. “Thou wilt thy ignorant entry make,” he declares. “Though skies spout fire and blood and nations quake.” Even so, he acknowledges humanity’s obstinate refusal to despair.
Must come and bide. And such are we —
Unreasoning, sanguine, visionary —
That I can hope
Health, love, friends, scope
In full for thee; can dream thou’lt find
Joys seldom yet attained by humankind!
I don’t think of the cosmos as a wiful player in mankind’s downfall, frustrating our efforts out of malicious spite. I believe our struggle to find meaning is played out in a universe that is indifferent, impersonal, and unaware of our existence. I’ve explored this several times, referencing the absurdist philosophy of Albert Camus. It underlies my atheism and why I don’t look beyond myself for any sense of purpose, meaning, or happiness. My friend Jen echoed this latter sentiment when she told me “I don’t feel like it’s good to rely on outside forces to make you feel happy.” She recommended a book to me: Happiness Is an Inside Job by John Powell. I’ve not read it but include the link for others who might wish to check it out.
I’ve yet to mention the role of mental health in happiness. The following words by actor Robin Williams are rendered all the more poignant by his suicide in August 2014.
I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy. Because they know what it feels like to feel absolutely worthless and they don’t want anybody else to feel like that.
It’s hard to be happy — however we might define that for ourselves — when depressed, anxious, or suicidal. Other mental and physical health conditions can also interfere with an authentic experience of happiness. This is something I learned first with Fran. Vigilance is an important aspect of her self-care but this can make it hard to acknowledge her emotions for what they are. As I remind her from time to time, “You’re allowed to have happy days without us worrying you’re manic. Likewise, you get to have bad days without us assuming it’s depression.” After a successful trip to visit her parents, Fran found herself struggling to integrate her feelings and memories. She didn’t know what to do with them or how to keep them from slipping away from her as she settled back into her home routine. I suggested this might be because she’s not used to having several really positive days all together.
Mania aside, being overly happy or positive can be toxic. In our early days as friends Fran found my “pathological positivity” exhausting and unhelpful. I learned that lesson, but my ability to remain calm was sometimes hard for her to deal with. It made her mad when she was unwell, either depressed or manic, and I’d listen without getting drawn into the drama. It’s natural to want others to be happy when we’re happy and sad or angry when we are, but without that emotional detachment I couldn’t have supported her as I did. She acknowledges this. “I needed you to be steady,” she told me recently. “Like an oak tree.”
I think of it as buffering what’s going on for me and the other people in my life. It works well most of the time, although I can struggle if most of my friends are struggling at the same time or there are other stressors in my life. It’s hard to “be happy” when people I care about are going through hard times. Worse, it can feel inappropriate or wrong.
I’ve written a lot here about happiness but what, if anything, have I learned in the process? What does happiness mean to me? And how would I answer the big elephant in the room question? I haven’t altered my idea of what happiness is. I still see it as fleeting. Pleasurable. Enjoyable. But temporary. It’s a nice to have but it’s not something I want to spend my life pursuing. I know people who do that. They seem always to be chasing their next happiness fix. The next big holiday. The next house move. The next grand experience. That’s fine. I’m not the happiness police. But it’s not what gives my life meaning.
I’m content — happy, if you insist — with my life as it is right now. There’s not much I’d change or want to do differently. There’s no one whose life I envy. I’m comfortable financially. I’m well-loved. I get to explore who I am and what I am. Right now I’m doing so sat at my favourite table in my favourite coffee shop. That makes me happy.
Photo by Seb [ P34K ] Hamel at Unsplash.
Comments
Post a Comment