The Paradox of Happiness, page two
acceptance? Indeed, many of the world's religions
suggest that contentment, even bliss, is the result of accepting the reality
of what is.
Where, then, does the Pursuit of Happiness fit
in? To think about that, you have to explore what's being pursued, and
how.
The American ethic, with us since the Founding
Fathers, distilled through such unlikely compatriots as William James,
Walt Whitman, Andrew Carnegie, Jack London and Teddy Roosevelt, stresses
happiness as an individual pursuit, the product of one's own striving and
achievements. This is not about "work," in the sense of mastery, from which
we derive self-esteem and a sense of satisfaction, but instead denotes
a finite goal, a "state of happiness" which is somehow attained as a result
of this individual achievement. And since achievement in a consumerist
culture is measured by the acquisition of goods and influence, happiness--the
state
of happiness--is a clearly defined destination.
However, since in this same consumerist culture
wealth and technology create ever-widening fields of goods and influence
to be acquired, the destination keeps moving ahead of one's efforts, just
out of reach. So you must try harder, make more money, buy more things,
live in better neighborhoods, lose more weight, attain higher office, etc.
This accounts for the fact that workaholics are,
in fact, rarely happy. Though they may be doing work they like, often the
goal is not the work itself, but rather perceived feelings of success and
a gratification of one's identity as important or effective in the world.
Unfortunately, if the cultural environment is unable to provide these good
feelings, the attempt to attain them by working harder proves fruitless.
The main problem with the pursuit of happiness
is that it's perceived as a pursuit at all. If we're in pursuit of something
"out there," ahead of us in some imagined future, then we're out of touch
with the here-and-now, the only place where our feelings are actually situated.
We can imagine being happy in some future time (when we've accomplished
the goal of that job promotion, the novel published, Oscar nomination,
etc.), but this momentary elation fades at the prospect of the distance
between here and there, in terms of time and effort.
On the other hand, if we opt for mere acceptance
of the here-and-now, for the reality of what is, of what use are
our dreams, hopes and fantasies?
Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
William Barrett, in his book The Illusion of Technique, stresses the importance
of balancing the tension between doing and being. That without being,
an acute awareness of the here and now, we lose an appreciation of the
moment--feelings, perceptions, bodily sensations--that keep us grounded
in the human experience. Yet without doing, initiating actions and
exerting effort upon the world, our sense of personal effectiveness and
will dwindles and dies.
How, then, can action--the doing of things, the
striving toward goals--be wedded with an acceptance of the here-and-now?
How can the journey be not toward the prize, or some imagined future happiness,
but into presence?
A Hindu sage, when asked the secret of contentment,
answered in one word: absorption. George Leonard, in his book Mastery,
speaks of the pleasure to be found in the full-hearted practice of a skill,
whether a martial art or playing the piano or being in a relationship.
The sculptor Henry Moore talks of the joy of dedicating one's life to something
whose chief virtue is that it's impossible to do.
What these points of view have in common is the
notion of ego, individual effort, surrendered to something larger than
itself. That rather than hoping that happiness will be attained as reward
for out effort, happiness is seen as a natural, continuing state arising
out of the effort itself. What Jung referred to as "loving the struggle."
What if happiness were conceived of not as a goal
or permanent state, but as a context, created out of a person's active
engagement in something larger than him or herself? We've all had the experience
of "losing" ourselves in a spirited game, or a particularly involving task,
even one that might ordinarily seem difficult or onerous.
(I recently had the experience of helping a farmer
in Minnesota replace the muffler on an ancient tractor. Jim and I battled
the rusted and heat-welded bolts for hours, sweating and straining, muttering
encouragement and disparagement to each other, until the damned thing was
repaired and running like a top. I stood on a side bumper, beaming like
an idiot, as Jim did a victory lap around the field. I can't remember the
last time I was that happy.)
I'm thinking too of a man I met in New York's infamous
"Hell's Kitchen" a number of years ago. An earnest recent college graduate,
he led a citizen's group trying to reclaim this notoriously poverty-stricken
and crime-ridden area from the drug dealers and gangs.
Like a cliché in every TV movie about self-empowerment
and the achievements of common people working together, Ed and his underpaid
staff fought the drug dealers, the cops, the slum landlords and an uncaring
city bureaucracy to reclaim tenement buildings, renovate them and create
decent public housing. This with no funding, no resources, wholesale public
skepticism, and frequent attempts on their lives. I'll never forget sitting
in the lobby of a recently-cleared tenement, buckets and scaffolding all
around, eating take-out from cardboard boxes. Ed talked so excitedly he
barely chewed his food, and his eyes shone.
What it comes down to, in the end, is love. If
love is surrender of the ego to connection--any connection, whether to
a person, a skill, a belief, a cause--then perhaps the willed engagement
in that connection, preferably one whose scope is larger than oneself,
produces happiness. The book you're writing, the homeless shelter you're
building, the child you're raising.
Framed in this way, happiness is released from
enslavement to our fervid imaginings of the future. It's no longer delayed
until we finally get in shape, win the lottery, find the perfect mate,
move to the country, etc. Instead, happiness is a process continually renewed
in the here-and-now, a feeling that arises as a result of our heartfelt
engagement in a task, often experienced as larger than ourselves, that
we love for its own sake.
Which brings us back to that scene from The Big
Chill, and an answer to Meg Tilly's question about what happy people are
like. It turns out they're like Ed, fighting an uphill battle in the bowels
of Hell's Kitchen, and seemingly wanting to be nowhere else. That must
be the reason I think of him so often.
After all, next to a Nepalese child with no arms
that I met in Bir Hospital outside Katmandu, Ed was the happiest person
I've ever known.
First published in August, 1994,
the Whole Life Times, P.O. Box 1187, Malibu, CA. 90265.
dennis@dennispalumbo.com
