Happiness runs...
In a circular motion, according to the sixties poet-sage Donovan Leach. Circles indeed. I said something today that came right on around that circle and smacked me on the back of the head, it did. In conversation with CJ and company on her blog I observed that relatively few people ever actually speak about the state of happiness. They’ll speak in neutral terms, academic intellectual term about many shades of shadow, but so rarely do you hear anyone discussing the states of joy, the states of bliss. Happiness seems a beggar forever dwelling in the cast off cloak off failure... failed. It doesn’t have a language of it’s own.
What smacked me in the head was an idea spoken in response to CJ saying she feared most folks found happiness a boring thing. I’d replied I thought it more likely they were intimidated by the idea of speaking about happiness.
*smack* Intimidated? OF WHAT? The thought rings true, and worse than that, it rings hollow. Just what in the world could cause people to be intimidated by happiness?!?
It isn’t like no one has noticed this, good grief, it was in the first Matrix movie. Agent Smith spoke of it when he was interrogating his captive Morpheus, laid it out in fine detail while Neo and company were frantically preparing for the bold rescue that provided half of the movies’ great action sequences. “...we tried to make it a paradise for you, but your minds rejected the vision, you kept waking up, entire crops lost... Or words to that effect, I’m not sure the quote is dead on. But still, if a hunter killer program on the verge of turning rogue virus understood this thought how can the humans not? Is it we don’t understand what Agent Smith was talking about? Or is it that we really, really don’t want to understand? At this point I’m of a mind to believe the latter is the more likely.
I’ve looked into myself, and realized that for all the words I’ve written I’m just as barren as anyone else in such realms. It is rare that I’ve found a context to even make the attempt. I call myself a writer, and I’m intimidated at the thought of trying to write a state of joy. I suppose I’m like everyone else, that lacking examples of a format I’m not really willing to risk whatever experiences might provide source stock. I suppose I’m afraid if I botch an attempt to set what I know of happiness into words I might lose the reality of being happy. In a funny sort of way it feels much like being afraid of the commitment that turns your sweetest lover into your mate.
I’m wondering now as I write this what part this has played in so very many of mankind’s shortcomings. I’m wondering how much unhappiness endures simply because even those who know happiness have no ability to communicate the nature of that state of life, no way to transfer an understanding of it. No small amount, that much is for sure.
It's true, Cyranos. I've thought about this on occasion, and it is true that unhappiness is more interesting and "real" than happiness, and that the most joyous works of literature and music are those that also explore unhappiness the most deeply. The joy of reading The Lord of the Rings, for example, comes in large part precisely from the sufferings and endurance of Frodo, Aragorn and the rest; without the looming threat of permanent and extreme worldwide unhappiness, the joy of Frodo's final rescue would be less moving.
ReplyDeleteBut how to convey or portray simple joy without seeming sappy, or worse, merely pornographic? (Music is a good way. Joseph Haydn's music is very joyous, and great fun.)