The Pursuit of Happiness

Lately I haven been thinking about happiness. Not only asking what it is but is there anyone who is likely to have more than a few months of positive happiness during a lifetime? Let’s assume that most of you are familiar with the full quote in the-declaration-of-independence, that is not what I am concerned with here. For the first time this year I heard of the annual International Day of Happiness on March 20th; this year’s theme is Happier Together, focusing on what we have in common, rather than what divides us. So this is what set me thinking of the rather strange phrase The Pursuit of Happiness, which first of all, brought me to the lines in Philip Larkin’s poem for Sally Amis, 'Born Yesterday'

In fact, may you be dull —
If that is what a skilled,
Vigilant, flexible,
Unemphasised, enthralled
Catching of happiness is called.

Nothing Earth shattering, gut busting, deliriously heart palpitating here, nothing pursued at full tilt, nothing desperately grabbed and held and jealously guarded here.

How can you pursue happiness? Isn’t it rather something that falls to your lot unexpectedly, that catches you unawares; if I were to set out to be truly happy deliberately, I wouldn’t have the first idea how to go about it. I am more likely to follow Emily Dickinson's’ Little Stone, of which she asks:

How happy is the little Stone
That rambles in the Road alone,
And doesn’t care about Careers
And Exigencies never fears —
Whose Coat of elemental Brown
A passing Universe put on,
And independent as the Sun
Associates or glows alone,
Fulfilling absolute Decree
In casual simplicity —

Independence, without a care in the world, not seriously striving but rambling happily, are what set the little stone - and therefore us - on the path to happiness.

Even simpler - and more fun is AA Milne’s John who

          had
Great Big
Waterproof
Boots on;
John had a
Great Big
Waterproof
Hat;
John had a
Great Big
Waterproof
Mackintosh --
And that
(Said John)
Is
That.

Yes, John and that great big puddle is waiting for you and what greater happiness can there be than jumping right in with both feet?

But Judith Viorst, the American writer, newspaper journalist, and psychoanalysis researcher - someone I had not come across before I ruminated about happiness - and what a happy find she turned out to be - sums it up for me perfectly:

Happiness (Reconsidered)

Is a clean bill of health from the doctor,
And the kids shouldn't move back home for
more than a year,
And not being audited, overdrawn, in Wilkes-Barre,
in a lawsuit or in traction.

Happiness
Is falling asleep without Valium,
And having two breasts to put in my brassiere,
And not (yet) needing to get my blood pressure lowered,
my eyelids raised or a second opinion.

And on Saturday nights
When my husband and I have rented
Something with Fred Astaire for the VCR,
And we're sitting around in our robes discussing,
The state of the world, back exercises, our Keoghs,
And whether to fix the transmission or buy a new car,
And we're eating a pint of rum-raisin ice cream
on the grounds that
Tomorrow we're starting a diet of fish, fruit and grain,
And my dad's in Miami dating a very nice widow,
And no one we love is in serious trouble or pain,
And our bringing-up-baby days are far behind us,
But our senior-citizen days have not begun,
It's not what I called happiness
When I was twenty-one,
But it's turning out to be
What happiness is.

None of the poets and writers here has mentioned the one cause of happiness that started me off on my small quest: other people. I may leave that for the next post.