Perspectives

I recently had dinner with friends I hadn’t seen for quite some time. I’ve been down with cancer the past few months and hadn’t been out and about as much. There’s nothing like a little surgery to put a stagger in one’s step. I’m on the mend, thank you very much, but the next day I received an email from one of my dinner compadres asking, “In spite of all the things going on in your/our lives, are you/we unhappy? Notice I didn’t ask if you’re happy.”

Asking whether I am unhappy or happy is a distinction I do not see but it left me wondering, “Did I appear unhappy?” Was I noticeably different in my outgoing persona? Was I unusually subdued or particularly reserved? Heaven forbid! I reflected on that possibility and determined that the question was more philosophical in its intent. Was I unhappy? Were “we” unhappy?

As context is everything to me, such questions can only be framed with “compared to what?” I actually think about the “specifics” of happiness, perhaps more than the average lad. Imagine a happy time in your life. That moment inevitably passes, what, then, are you? What are you when you are not happy? Are you pre-happy, post-happy or just in-between bouts of happiness? Is life about moving from distinct moments of happiness — which constitute 34.6 percent or 47.3 percent or 58.9 percent or 15.1 percent of your life — to your next instance of elation? Is contented the same as happiness?

And all this prompts the question: What is the meaning of life? And where does happiness fit into that equation? Happiness, per se, didn’t move to the first tier of serious philosophical consideration until, oh, about the 18th century. It was codified in America’s Declaration of Independence when Thomas Jefferson wrote that the pursuit of happiness was a self-evident truth. Arguably Jefferson was speaking to/of a “public happiness” but regardless, his self-evident truth has become the raison d'être of modern living.

The pursuit of happiness? Hmmm? Must happiness be pursued or is it possible to achieve happiness by just being? Is that an intellectual possibility? “There’s nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so?” I particularly enjoy beauty. Flowers give me joy (happiness) strictly from their beauty (color, balance, harmony, form, etc.). No pursuit necessary. But I do tend my garden.

I am a hedonist, unapologetically so. Human beings are sensation junkies. Everything we know and are relies on our senses to convey. Yet scientifically, mere observation changes the equation. (I like to watch, Eve. Hah!) Is happiness then only a derivation of our “subjective” perceptions? Ah, the $64,000 question. And the answer is yes, unequivocally so.

Have enough food, adequate housing and sufficient “meaningful” relationships, toss in health and satisfactory intellectual/artistic pursuits and the modern individual is left, many times, to consider the meaning of it all. Which is where some of us find ourselves.

Life intrudes. Mythologist Joseph Campbell said that we must “participate joyfully in the sorrows of life.” On the surface that seems incongruous. For as much as happiness is a worthy pursuit, life and its accompanying sorrow always intrudes. People die. We waste away. Some expire before “their” time. Many self-destruct. We all participate in our collective idiocy/destruction (as a species).

Happiness is no more the human condition than sorrow.

But we try. Damned, if we don’t.

And I love humanity for that. Happy New Year!

Jepson is a 24-year resident of Florida. He’s fiscally conservative, socially liberal, likes art and embraces diversity of opinion. Reach him at [email protected]