Parents say they only want their children to be "healthy and happy." While the first wish is innocuous enough, I cannot imagine a more toxic hope for anyone than the latter. Aside from contributing to the false notion that happiness is some kind of ultimate state that one can achieve instead of merely an episodic emotion, it also implies that the goal of life is to be happy. What a selfish, meaningless goal.
This is not a diatribe against being happy. I like being happy. But should that ever be someone's ultimate goal, for their offspring or themselves? Should it not be success or passion or morality or understanding? Happiness just seems so very... trite. Would I want my children to be miserable? Of course not. But I do want them to be miserable for at least some of their lives. Being exposed only to happiness is like being exposed to only one belief. It allows for no growth in a person.
Does happiness build character? Do we learn more from our successes or from our failures? The ability to feel is a gift, and whether it be hurt or bliss, we should embrace it. We should not seek out only happiness, but all emotions that might define and shape our lives.
There is neither happiness nor misery in the world, there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, then we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.
-Alexandre Dumas, Le comte de Monte Cristo
My personal condolences to anyone who was disappointed by the fact I had strayed from the rigorous borders of classicism and medievalism.
Agreed that happiness lacks the ability to build character, nor is it something you can have most of the time anyway. Brief moments of it, perhaps, and yes, felt more deeply if you've been miserable.
ReplyDeleteBut as someone who's had my share of being unhappy, I don't think being happy such a bad goal in life. We are all of us trite, in that none of us will do something that hasn't been done before. So better to be happily trite than unhappily trite.