How to Find Happiness: A Rumination
If you keep a pocketful of questions for when conversations run dry, add the following: "When was the last time you were absolutely, extraordinarily happy?"
It might take a while for your friend or acquaintance or lover to remember. Then again, it might not. I hope it is the latter. That is the kind of life we should lead.
In any case, whatever his or her answer, you better be ready. Because as soon as they answer - or fail to - they will turn the tables and ask you the same. And for good reason: If you are going to make them think THAT hard about their own life in front of you, they will inflict the same misery upon you and sit back to watch you squirm. ;-)
But, it's more than that. You won't hear just one answer, and neither will the person on the other end of the table. The second, more subtle, question being asked is: "Tell me what has worked for you so that I can try it, too." That is, there is a subtle demand for the answer to happiness in and of itself. And when you discuss temporary moments, you tap into the hope for infinite happiness. "What has worked for you? Maybe I'll try that." And also, of course, there's the idea of, "Just talking about that joy and seeing your face light up brings me joy right now." Joy engenders joy.
Now... a brief veering...
I teach a writing course at a community college. I only came into the possession of the course a few days before I had to teach it, and I'm about four weeks in. The course is ENGL 1301, and it's fast-paced - 9 weeks long. The required book that goes along with 1301 I had never seen before, and so I am reading it just a little bit prior to my students. Or, as is most likely the case, I am the only one in the class actually reading it.
One of the most important points that the book makes is that, for most people, generating ideas requires writing. That is, sitting in a room won't get the gears turning for the paper. To come up with a job-application letter, a sonnet, an essay, you have to spend time writing your ideas down, playing with them, teasing them out, and examining them in order to come up with a topic, put your thoughts in order, and flesh out your argument.
In other words, before you even begin to write your paper, you have to write.
And this is generally true for everyone, even for writers who are advanced enough that they can do most of the somersaults and leaps in their heads. The one thing that happens for professionals and amateurs alike is the following: They go along, writing, and come up with an idea (perhaps through a slip of phrase, a misplaced comma, a homophone, or logical next step) that they had never expected. That is, the idea is produced ONLY through writing. In short, they surprise themselves. Professional writers surprise themselves all the time. ("Did this even come from me?" they ask). And, once they encounter this new idea, they have to go back to the beginning of the paper or article or whatever and reform everything so as to include this new, fantastic argument. Eventually, they can begin to see their writing as a failure /unless/ this saying-more-than-I-meant-to-say occurs. You can see, easily, how the idea of the muse fits into this. Or, perhaps, the idea of Godly inspiration. An argument entered into the paper that is far more amazing than you intended, and though it entered via you, it has an alien-ness to it. It's almost as though someone else put it there. Someone higher. Someone better.
In any case, this restructuring of the entire work to account for this new, inadvertent and fortuitous idea is what we call "paraprosdokian." The end is such a surprise it forces us to go back to the beginning to re-understand and re-order everything.
The only type of writer who believes he can sit in a room and come up with a perfect paper without accessing the tool of simply writing is an amateur. He doesn't understand the value, yet, of the paraprosdokian. But, even more importantly than that, he doesn't understand the necessity of writing before knowing. Of trusting specifics on the page rather than generalities in his mind.
A good paper requires specificity. Specificity requires a multitude of things other than sitting in a room. It requires tools. It requires drilling. Every day. You cannot magic the water out of the well. You cannot magic the essay out of thin air. You have to have tools, and you have to use them.
This is how we go from a general idea to a specific one. A general understanding of an argument to a specific one. Hazy to clear. Foggy to crystal. If we sit in a room, and we have no pen and paper, no way to create symbols to help ourselves along, we exist in fog and haze and generalities. We only tap into the crystal, the clarity, the specificity with tools.
It is the very difference between imagining an apple and holding one in your hands.
Okay... my veering off topic is complete. Now, to return to the original focus.
My argument is we must understand happiness the same way as we understand writing.
On one hand, emotions (like arguments and ideas) can be general, hazy, and foggy. In the same way that you can picture an apple, you can "picture" happiness.
Then, there is happiness in the specific sense, in the clear sense, in the crystal sense. This is happiness in the sense of actually holding the apple.
And if we are to look at people as students of happiness in the same way that we look at people as students of writing, too many people believe that they should just be able to magic the perfect essay into existence. That they can magic the water out of the well. That all is possible just sitting in a room.
"If I just sit here and think hard enough, I can get the essay done."
"If I just sit here and think hard enough, I can be happy."
No.
If you want happiness in the specific sense, in the revised sense, in the sense that you can be going along and stumble upon a happiness you never thought possible (just like writing and coming along an idea you didn't know you had), then you cannot just sit in a room and expect it to come about. You have to use tools.
This, I believe, is a completely different way of thinking about life than most people usually use. I think that most of us believe, "I should just be able to sit here and be happy, and if I'm not happy, something is wrong with me." It is probably very similar to my students who sit in class and think, "I should just be able to sit here and come up with a perfect essay in my head to write. And if I can't, I'm a horrible writer." Both assume that one can create what one desires without moving. That one can magic it out without lifting a pen.
Is this not the same idea as The Men Who Stare at Goats? I'm not as familiar with the government study, but I believe the basic principal is that people were hoping they would just be able to sort of sit in a room, stare at goats, and through some sort of magic or mental ability, kill them or move them with their minds or something. It was, again, "magical thinking."
And it is a similar idea in The Yellow Wallpaper - the short story that altered psychological bed-rest prescription forever. The fictional story tells of a woman who was (as most women were back then) ordered by her doctor to rest 24/7 to feel better, and that only made her more insane. Action was necessary, but action was not prescribed.
Would this not explain why we feel so much better when we travel? During travel, we act, with an open mind, expecting... something. We are active all the time. It is expected of us on vacation. To actively pursue things that please you. This is not your normal mindset, perhaps. Your normal mindset might be more along the lines of choosing one thing to focus on and sacrificing all else for the sake of it, including happiness.
I think emotions get subjected to the "magical thinking" idea more than anything else because they often do feel magical. As though they rise up and out of nowhere and consume us. And, again, I think this is an effect of the paraprosdokian element. (Think of the muse, again. Think of that Godly inspiration. Happiness feels like it comes down from the heavens upon us - it has that foreign aspect to it, just like the idea that lands in a paper fortuitously). That is, stumbling upon a happiness you didn't know existed is what happens naturally when you are using the correct tools, and that type of happiness is so immense it seems unattached to the actual act itself, for it rewrites your very understanding of what happiness is, and it rewrites the very moment in which you experienced it. You never naturally connect it to whatever act you're going through because the emotion seems to rise up and out of the act. And, it often can't be repeated through the same act. Well, that makes sense. If I write the same paragraph, again and again, I'm not likely to find that paraprosdokian element as if I were writing new things.
I cannot tell you what tools to use to gain your happiness. They must be tools of your own choice. But I do believe that what is most important is that we drop the idea that we can have a specific, clear, crystal happiness by committing acts that only allow for the general, hazy, and foggy.
The most bullshit argument I hear, usually in anti-drug commentators, is "I don't need to drink. I can imagine the sensation. I don't need to every do crystal meth. I can just imagine feeling that way. I don't need cocaine to get me energized. I can imagine the energy into myself." The amount I loathe these arguments cannot be overstated. For one, they account for no agency besides themselves. For another, though (and I'm not saying you should try meth - I would never, ever argue that), you cannot just sit in a room and magic the water out of the well, the essay out of thin air. And, guess what. That's what you're arguing. You are perpetuating the myth that causes the downfall of happiness: I can just sit here and have all the experiences arrive. I can just sit here and think hard enough, and happiness will come to me. Where is my happiness? Why am I not happy?
When people answer the question, "When was the last time you were extraordinarily happy?", they have a story to tell. They don't just say, "I was sitting in my room, and I forced this amazing sensation over myself, and it was spectacular." If a person said that, it would be creepy. People have a SPECIFIC story to tell - a tool they used - that ended up providing the unexpected sensation of happiness that rewrote the idea of happiness or the situation itself.
"I and two other people drove a slipshod go-kart my friend made one night. The steering wheel was fucked, and I nearly hit a tree. The temperature was perfect outside... We took turns riding in it until midnight. It was so dark out, I could only find my friends because they had one flashlight. It was always a tiny dot in the distance."
"We shot fireworks off for three hours. One chased so-and-so through the street. My clothes still smell like sulfur. The pictures don't do it justice."
"I traveled to Versailles. With twenty other people, I did an eight hour biking tour of the Palace of Versailles and its grounds. We had a picnic with wine and macaroons on the lawns."
Specificity.
You're not just sitting in a room.
You're not in a haze. Nothing is foggy.
It's crystal. It's clear. It seems as though the emotion that arrives comes from another place entirely. But it's all because of the act. It's all because of the tools you used to get there.
This. Is. Happiness.
It might take a while for your friend or acquaintance or lover to remember. Then again, it might not. I hope it is the latter. That is the kind of life we should lead.
In any case, whatever his or her answer, you better be ready. Because as soon as they answer - or fail to - they will turn the tables and ask you the same. And for good reason: If you are going to make them think THAT hard about their own life in front of you, they will inflict the same misery upon you and sit back to watch you squirm. ;-)
But, it's more than that. You won't hear just one answer, and neither will the person on the other end of the table. The second, more subtle, question being asked is: "Tell me what has worked for you so that I can try it, too." That is, there is a subtle demand for the answer to happiness in and of itself. And when you discuss temporary moments, you tap into the hope for infinite happiness. "What has worked for you? Maybe I'll try that." And also, of course, there's the idea of, "Just talking about that joy and seeing your face light up brings me joy right now." Joy engenders joy.
Now... a brief veering...
I teach a writing course at a community college. I only came into the possession of the course a few days before I had to teach it, and I'm about four weeks in. The course is ENGL 1301, and it's fast-paced - 9 weeks long. The required book that goes along with 1301 I had never seen before, and so I am reading it just a little bit prior to my students. Or, as is most likely the case, I am the only one in the class actually reading it.
One of the most important points that the book makes is that, for most people, generating ideas requires writing. That is, sitting in a room won't get the gears turning for the paper. To come up with a job-application letter, a sonnet, an essay, you have to spend time writing your ideas down, playing with them, teasing them out, and examining them in order to come up with a topic, put your thoughts in order, and flesh out your argument.
In other words, before you even begin to write your paper, you have to write.
And this is generally true for everyone, even for writers who are advanced enough that they can do most of the somersaults and leaps in their heads. The one thing that happens for professionals and amateurs alike is the following: They go along, writing, and come up with an idea (perhaps through a slip of phrase, a misplaced comma, a homophone, or logical next step) that they had never expected. That is, the idea is produced ONLY through writing. In short, they surprise themselves. Professional writers surprise themselves all the time. ("Did this even come from me?" they ask). And, once they encounter this new idea, they have to go back to the beginning of the paper or article or whatever and reform everything so as to include this new, fantastic argument. Eventually, they can begin to see their writing as a failure /unless/ this saying-more-than-I-meant-to-say occurs. You can see, easily, how the idea of the muse fits into this. Or, perhaps, the idea of Godly inspiration. An argument entered into the paper that is far more amazing than you intended, and though it entered via you, it has an alien-ness to it. It's almost as though someone else put it there. Someone higher. Someone better.
In any case, this restructuring of the entire work to account for this new, inadvertent and fortuitous idea is what we call "paraprosdokian." The end is such a surprise it forces us to go back to the beginning to re-understand and re-order everything.
The only type of writer who believes he can sit in a room and come up with a perfect paper without accessing the tool of simply writing is an amateur. He doesn't understand the value, yet, of the paraprosdokian. But, even more importantly than that, he doesn't understand the necessity of writing before knowing. Of trusting specifics on the page rather than generalities in his mind.
A good paper requires specificity. Specificity requires a multitude of things other than sitting in a room. It requires tools. It requires drilling. Every day. You cannot magic the water out of the well. You cannot magic the essay out of thin air. You have to have tools, and you have to use them.
This is how we go from a general idea to a specific one. A general understanding of an argument to a specific one. Hazy to clear. Foggy to crystal. If we sit in a room, and we have no pen and paper, no way to create symbols to help ourselves along, we exist in fog and haze and generalities. We only tap into the crystal, the clarity, the specificity with tools.
It is the very difference between imagining an apple and holding one in your hands.
Okay... my veering off topic is complete. Now, to return to the original focus.
My argument is we must understand happiness the same way as we understand writing.
On one hand, emotions (like arguments and ideas) can be general, hazy, and foggy. In the same way that you can picture an apple, you can "picture" happiness.
Then, there is happiness in the specific sense, in the clear sense, in the crystal sense. This is happiness in the sense of actually holding the apple.
And if we are to look at people as students of happiness in the same way that we look at people as students of writing, too many people believe that they should just be able to magic the perfect essay into existence. That they can magic the water out of the well. That all is possible just sitting in a room.
"If I just sit here and think hard enough, I can get the essay done."
"If I just sit here and think hard enough, I can be happy."
No.
If you want happiness in the specific sense, in the revised sense, in the sense that you can be going along and stumble upon a happiness you never thought possible (just like writing and coming along an idea you didn't know you had), then you cannot just sit in a room and expect it to come about. You have to use tools.
This, I believe, is a completely different way of thinking about life than most people usually use. I think that most of us believe, "I should just be able to sit here and be happy, and if I'm not happy, something is wrong with me." It is probably very similar to my students who sit in class and think, "I should just be able to sit here and come up with a perfect essay in my head to write. And if I can't, I'm a horrible writer." Both assume that one can create what one desires without moving. That one can magic it out without lifting a pen.
Is this not the same idea as The Men Who Stare at Goats? I'm not as familiar with the government study, but I believe the basic principal is that people were hoping they would just be able to sort of sit in a room, stare at goats, and through some sort of magic or mental ability, kill them or move them with their minds or something. It was, again, "magical thinking."
And it is a similar idea in The Yellow Wallpaper - the short story that altered psychological bed-rest prescription forever. The fictional story tells of a woman who was (as most women were back then) ordered by her doctor to rest 24/7 to feel better, and that only made her more insane. Action was necessary, but action was not prescribed.
Would this not explain why we feel so much better when we travel? During travel, we act, with an open mind, expecting... something. We are active all the time. It is expected of us on vacation. To actively pursue things that please you. This is not your normal mindset, perhaps. Your normal mindset might be more along the lines of choosing one thing to focus on and sacrificing all else for the sake of it, including happiness.
I think emotions get subjected to the "magical thinking" idea more than anything else because they often do feel magical. As though they rise up and out of nowhere and consume us. And, again, I think this is an effect of the paraprosdokian element. (Think of the muse, again. Think of that Godly inspiration. Happiness feels like it comes down from the heavens upon us - it has that foreign aspect to it, just like the idea that lands in a paper fortuitously). That is, stumbling upon a happiness you didn't know existed is what happens naturally when you are using the correct tools, and that type of happiness is so immense it seems unattached to the actual act itself, for it rewrites your very understanding of what happiness is, and it rewrites the very moment in which you experienced it. You never naturally connect it to whatever act you're going through because the emotion seems to rise up and out of the act. And, it often can't be repeated through the same act. Well, that makes sense. If I write the same paragraph, again and again, I'm not likely to find that paraprosdokian element as if I were writing new things.
I cannot tell you what tools to use to gain your happiness. They must be tools of your own choice. But I do believe that what is most important is that we drop the idea that we can have a specific, clear, crystal happiness by committing acts that only allow for the general, hazy, and foggy.
The most bullshit argument I hear, usually in anti-drug commentators, is "I don't need to drink. I can imagine the sensation. I don't need to every do crystal meth. I can just imagine feeling that way. I don't need cocaine to get me energized. I can imagine the energy into myself." The amount I loathe these arguments cannot be overstated. For one, they account for no agency besides themselves. For another, though (and I'm not saying you should try meth - I would never, ever argue that), you cannot just sit in a room and magic the water out of the well, the essay out of thin air. And, guess what. That's what you're arguing. You are perpetuating the myth that causes the downfall of happiness: I can just sit here and have all the experiences arrive. I can just sit here and think hard enough, and happiness will come to me. Where is my happiness? Why am I not happy?
When people answer the question, "When was the last time you were extraordinarily happy?", they have a story to tell. They don't just say, "I was sitting in my room, and I forced this amazing sensation over myself, and it was spectacular." If a person said that, it would be creepy. People have a SPECIFIC story to tell - a tool they used - that ended up providing the unexpected sensation of happiness that rewrote the idea of happiness or the situation itself.
"I and two other people drove a slipshod go-kart my friend made one night. The steering wheel was fucked, and I nearly hit a tree. The temperature was perfect outside... We took turns riding in it until midnight. It was so dark out, I could only find my friends because they had one flashlight. It was always a tiny dot in the distance."
"We shot fireworks off for three hours. One chased so-and-so through the street. My clothes still smell like sulfur. The pictures don't do it justice."
"I traveled to Versailles. With twenty other people, I did an eight hour biking tour of the Palace of Versailles and its grounds. We had a picnic with wine and macaroons on the lawns."
Specificity.
You're not just sitting in a room.
You're not in a haze. Nothing is foggy.
It's crystal. It's clear. It seems as though the emotion that arrives comes from another place entirely. But it's all because of the act. It's all because of the tools you used to get there.
This. Is. Happiness.
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