This just in: according to two new studies measuring the happiness index, women are less happy than we used to be and markedly more disgruntled than men. Speculation has been that this study confirms what most of my friends and I experience as the current state of postfeminist feminism. Between working and our responsibilities at home, not only are we trying to have it all but we find ourselves having to do it all, and we're pissed off. True enough. But I believe the entire nature of this research is suspect and is asking the wrong question anyway. Why all this quantification of happiness? Is happiness a value that deserves so much attention and study?
What about those of us whose goal was never happiness to begin with? For the record, I hate happiness. I love melancholic novels, depressed poets and pessimistic prognosticators. I like sad songs and weepy movies. I'm a sentimental drunk. My idea of a good time is drinking a double espresso while reading Death in Venice. Venice is my idea of a rollicking-good-time town. I was never a shiny happy person, although I have been both shiny and happy at the same time (to achieve this I once performed an act that we have been informed never happens in Iran, or even in our own military for that matter). Happy meals, happy faces; don't worry, be happy. Given the state of the world, perhaps if we had a little more worry and a little less happy, we'd be better off.
Furthermore, I don't count "the ability to be happy" among the attributes I value -- although there are many qualities I find laudable and even pleasurable. I admire the steadfastness of Aung San Suu Kyi, the prolificacy of Stephen King, the single-mindedness of the Dalai Lama, the insight of Susan Sontag, the rakishness of Clive Owen. And hey, I am in awe at the unfunniness of Dane Cook: it is so complete, it's astonishing. But I can't think of anyone who's ever won a Nobel, a Pulitzer or even a booby prize for happiness.
That today's women don't find doing laundry and dusting particularly pleasurable pursuits shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. I doubt these chores made my grandmother ecstatic, but a convincing argument can be made that she did feel satisfaction in the completion of the tasks because she believed she was contributing to the greater good of her family in post-Depression era America.
Is it any wonder we feel discontented when we've lost that powerful motivator -- a sense of working toward a shared future? In this winner-take-all society, we toil for companies that don't value us, for families we don't get to spend enough time with to actually enjoy, in a country with an Administration that purports to value freedom but not our individual freedoms.
I don't mean to be a killjoy. I like vegging out as much as anyone. In fact, one of my recent happinesses was sitting down on Sunday nights to watch The Sopranos, a series with, it's worth noting, a central theme that bemoans the loss of belonging to something bigger than oneself, even if that something is a crime syndicate.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this research is not the study itself but that the results were published on the front page of the business section of the New York Times. Surely this is no happy accident. Some savvy editor knows that advertisers eagerly await this kind of information so they can sell us products and services that promise to deliver a little happily ever after. Or maybe I've just been watching a little too much of AMC's Mad Men, which is just the kind of downer entertainment I thoroughly enjoy.
Originally posted here.
But I don't do anything to make your life miserable, and I'm good with dogs! All kinds of dogs; there are so many recipes I can think of to make your palate sing!
Oh, btw, I think you were a genius on Dinner and a Movie, and they were wrong to subpoena you like that.
Yours truly,
anonymous
You cannot BE it all
You cannot DO it all
... at least not well.
This myth we have been selling to girls and women needs to be debunked loudly and clearly.
Life is CHOICES and there are always TRADE-OFFs
But seeing as their lives seem devoted to The University, then that's all I could imagine their experiences and observations to be made of.
That, and forms filled out by people they don't know, who are variously happy or not.
A measure of happiness is music, and your capacity to enjoy it: The more that music makes you happy, the happier a person you are.
Even some birds know this, and sing daily a song as testimony.
A measure of happiness is laughter; and as laughter becomes harder to find, the measure becomes smiling.
This is too obvious, but still true, and must be said.
A measure of happiness is finding the play of children to be a pleasant thing to watch, and even more so to join.
Because the things that mostly make us unhappy, are the things children either don't care about, or are as yet unaware of; and so why should we care about those things, or pay much attention to them.
A measure of happiness is found in watching television, but inversely so; and not because the idiot-box transmits such an unhappy beam, but because it draws us away from happy things.
Like People.
Children especially.
A measure of happiness may be found in words, but only in words that invoke happy things: Such as the words children and play and laughter...
...but the word music does not necessarily invoke anything happy, unless it is made to make us think of something happy, both seen and heard.
Like Bird-Song.
That's a happy word.
http://www.pinkthunder.com/pinkthunder/2004/06/lovesickness.html
IMO, love is a sickness with no cure, only treatments -- like work, meditation on desirelessness, and drinking. why a form of pain would be considered something to be valued and treasured rather than a masochistic error, is an astonishing leftover of the medieval European invention of courtly love. that's my theory of happiness -- wanting is pain, having is pain, fearing loss is pain, being born is pain, living is pain, dying is pain. wanting nothing, having nothing, fearing nothing, going beyond birth and death -- that would be a paradise.
And after the last angst-filled decade where nearly everyone put on this cynical and ironically detached persona; this decade, which has really given us something to be angry at, the powers that be want to try to convince us that our biggest problem is that we're lacking in the overwhelming feelings of happiness. You know, HAPPINESS, our inalienable rights as Americans. And, instead of blaming the condition of the world (or, at least, the average Americans increased knowledge of how the really has truly operated for some time--often for the benefit of American middle class comforts), these experts tried to put the ball in our court and blame us individually for our own lack of confidence in the future.
Happiness is important but not so important that you ignore reality or take pills to block out any feelings of pain. Pain and sadness are necessary in order to understand happiness. One of the great things about being happy is that you're not sad. Meaning, if I popped pills or ignored harsh realities as a means of avoiding unpleasant thoughts, I would not cherish the truly happy moments of my life because I wouldn't really understand what it meant to feel otherwise.
We live in an all or nothing world and, often, women subscribe to that belief more than men. They spend their life trying to be "perfect" or, at least, trying to find the "perfect" guy who will accept our less-than-perfect selves. No one is going to accept each of us, warts and all, unless we accept ourselves first and foremost. Unless we realize that there is no such thing as perfect. Even nearly perfect women are air-brushed, hire stylists, and use an abundance of magic tricks to make us believe otherwise.
This country is too black and white for the average person to indulge in moral relativeness and ambiguity. The French have a word, innue. Americans call it depression.