welcome back and some thoroughly disorganized thoughts on happiness

hey there. it's been a few months. the summer, you know. on with it...

Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.

-- Brave New World

i reread the above (the book, not just the quote) over labor day weekend.

that quote is far and away my favorite bit. the book itself is one of those which, though i'm glad to have read it, is not necessarily on my top 10 list.

that being said, the quote's just the tops. even more than the phrasing, what i love about it is what it implies: that happiness can be -- and, in fact, is -- simple, subdued, private; and that a lack of happiness can be (and often is) glamorous, sensational, thrilling. of course, an extension of the former half of that implication is the basis for the whole hellish societal system huxley's writing about, and the latter half is what gets people like myself with a penchant for hemingway and the beats and such in all sorts of trouble.

(can anyone actually read my writing, by the way? i've just reread that last paragraph.)

for the record, i'm not trying to say that happiness is boring, or that unhappiness is, by definition, exciting. i disagree with the designation of actual happiness as "squalid": i'm all for the quiet, peaceful, understated life, which i find "grand" in its own way. and i'm not about to start wishing for some part of my life to fall apart just to shake things up a bit (though a younger -- and, it could be argued, stupid -- me might have).

what i will say is that it's come to my attention over the course of several years that, to paraphrase my dad's description of a similar phenomenon is his life, the things i bitch about the most are the things i love the most. this may be true of everyone, or maybe just libras, or maybe just only children, or maybe just me and my dad. point being, i believe there's room for that quote to be both true and false. it runs alongside the same river as "you always hurt the one you love" (or, avenue q-style, "the more you love someone, the more you want to kill them") -- our most profound sources of happiness are also the things that cause us the most frustration, and the things that complicate our lives are also the things that give us a measure of peace and stability.

which is the whole point of the book, i suppose, even if huxley didn't mean it to be: if human beings are capable of anything complex, it's rationalizing paradox. we can't be satisfied with just being "happy" any more than we can be satisfied with being miserable. we need challenges to our happiness to make us happy. it's like the rationalization your parents gave you for having to leave your best friend's house after a super-fun play date when you didn't want to leave: if you don't go now, you'll never be able to come back.

sick, yeah? and also kind of lovely.