I can’t tell one from the other
I find you, or you find me?
There was a time before we were born
If someone asks, this is where I’ll be,
–Talking Heads/This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)
The Modern American World really wants us all to be happy. All the time. It all started with Prozac. Just being as happy as you were naturally wasn’t enough. You had to be blissful. Constantly blissful. Eternally smiling.
At first it was a minor barrage of anti-depressant “ask your doctor” commercials. Nothing against anti-depressants, I am pretty sure they may have gotten me through a year that I might not have come out of alive, but I do have a bit of ire about commercials for drugs. That’s a rant for another day.
Anyway, that is how I remember the start of it. What this article on Brainpickings.org refers to as the modern happiness industrial complex. There is a lot of pressure on people to be perpetually blissful. Pressure that until very recently did not exist.
People had other things to deal with. Getting the crops planted. Feeding the livestock. Burying their children and spouses who kept dying of inconveniently incurable diseases. Big stuff. Sometimes people were happy, I am sure, but mostly I am guessing they were tired. And hungry. Like they are in the parts of the world that are still un-Modern.
Given the choice, wouldn’t we all choose happy over sad? Most of us would, sure. Being happy is..happy. Who doesn’t like happy?
But what happens when you force feed yourself happiness to the exclusion of all other feelings? I think maybe, just maybe, you become less authentic.
What started as drug companies trying to create a new market for their product has become a nearly inescapable onslaught of happiness porn. The Internet seems to consist of equal parts cat videos and articles on how to be happy.
But maybe it is a trap, or at least not the right goal. There’s nothing wrong with happiness, but maybe what we need is to live an authentic life with all of the human emotions. Happiness, contentment, sadness, anger, melancholy. People who claim to be happy all the time? I don’t find them very believable. It seems like they are either suppressing their other emotions or just denying that they have them. I also suspect most of them aren’t really happy, either.
I could be wrong about all of this, of course. I’ve been known to be wrong about pretty much everything. On the other hand, I am mostly happy. Not always. There are some sad, difficult things going on right now. I probably spend a little more time crying and being overly introspective than usual. Still, I laugh a lot. I smile a lot. I enjoy most of every day. I love people. It isn’t perfect. Nothing ever is.
You have to find the thing that works for you.
It might not be a positive affirmation.
It might not be being in the moment
It might include being over analytical.
It might include some large doses of trash reading when your brain is tired.
Sometimes you might want to do some singing.
You might want to acknowledge that happiness won’t be there every second.
You might want to just tell the happiness mafia to fuck off.
It’s your happiness.
Do it however you want.
And what is so bad about melancholy anyway?
Where would most of the great movies, books and music be without the emotional drama of sadness, anger and betrayal? Not that I want any more betrayal in my life, please–but a cup of coffee and some bittersweet thoughts with a fire going and rain hitting the window? That’s not a bad thing. I like to think that periods of solitary melancholy let me recharge my happiness.
Or maybe I am deluded and I am doing it all wrong.
If I am, then I am doing it all wrong in a way that mostly suits me.
I can write out the worst of it, and laugh at almost all of it. Sometimes through tears if I have to.
Anyway, it’s Winter in Oregon.
It would be unnatural to have a sunny disposition all the time in the gray, cloudy, soggy Willamette Valley. I am blending in with my surroundings.
My laugh always gives me away though.