Among books written to teach people how to be happy is one
called The Science of Happiness by Dr. Dearden. The doctor is the discoverer of
what he calls the doctrine of the Morning Beam. It is meant for the benefit of
the dejected in much the same way in which the drug penicillin is meant for the
benefit of the sick. The doctrine is couched in these words: “On rising from
your bed go to your looking-glass and force yourself to greet with a beaming
smile that curiously complex fellow who is yourself. It is perfectly true that
you cannot be happy to order, but you can pretend to be happy at any rate. Let
your Morning Beam include every possible gesture of face and body which you can
devise and accomplish to express your elation at the moment.”
* * *
A more ancient authority, Aristotle, advanced what came to be
known as the doctrine of the mean. Do nothing overmuch and everything in
moderation, and you will be happy, he said. Moderation being a virtue of Middle
age, the Aristotlean recipe for
happiness raises an interesting issue: are the old happier than the young?
Equanimity, no doubt, belongs to the aged to a degree not attainable to the
young unless it be the extremely young, like babies, whose resources for
maintaining themselves in a state of high enjoyment is tamely described by the
term, happiness, oscillating as it does, between ecstasy and beatitude. Babies
have their moments of intense misery too—which is of a kind far surpassing in
intensity anything of a like nature within the experience of grown-ups.
In the swing of the pendulum of emotion, a moderate motion
does not seem conducive to richness of experience. Moderation is negative in
content. It robs happiness of positive emphasis: sterilizes it, as it were.
Aristotle reduces happiness to mere avoidance of trouble through the safety
device of moderation and insults its quality. Dearden insults it even more by
turning it into a mechanical thing, a fruition of labored poses and forced
smiles.
* * *
For all the cocksureness of scientists and thinkers no sure
recipe for happiness has yet been found. There is in fact no direct approach to
happiness. It comes, and is felt, as an after-effect of the pursuit of other
things. The acquisitive find their happiness in piling money and property, the
generous in giving away what they have. The vain are happy when they are
flattered—they flatter themselves when others fail and feel happy if there are
people to listen. I know of one who derived a strange happiness when he regaled
others with accounts of his supposed intimacy with the Governor. He lived for
moments when he could tell others of the telephonic talks, most of them
imaginary, that he had had with His Excellency. Some peculiar people are very
happy when they contrive to take photographs of themselves in company with the
eminent and see them published in the newspapers. In the pursuit of happiness
even grief is not excluded as a contributory aid. Many bereaved people pay very
heavy advertisement fees now-a-days merely to enjoy the happiness of publicizing
their bereaved condition to the world.
* * *
Elections play an important part in the pursuit of happiness.
At election time the struggle for happiness is intensified. Apart from the
happiness of winning success, there are other varieties of joy such as come
from intrigues, wirepullings and simulations of tremendous personal importance vis-à-vis
the ordering of government and public affairs. The smaller the men to greater
the joy of victory, the more vigorous the gusto of ousting movements so that
the paradise of the moment may not be spoiled by the advent of betters.
* * *
The worst about happiness is that it is a fleeting state that
refuses to endure for long. It is often found that the effort and the struggle
and the price far exceed the value of the happiness achieved, and the things we
have longed and labored for, give when obtained, no more than a thrill that is
extinguished at the very moment of possession. The sages are therefore wary
about spending their energy too much in quest of happiness. Bernard Shaw says
that “we may spend our whole lives in pursuit of the things that are thought to
make men happy and it will avail us nothing”—“the secret of being happy is not
to give ourselves enough leisure to wonder whether we are miserable or not”,
but to have “a full life and a manifold of duties.”—(April 20, 1946) S A K A.
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