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I’ve Stopped Pursuing Happiness
Yes, it’s true. I’m very glad though that it is still clearly spelled out in the Declaration of Independence that it is my God-given right to do so.
Thomas Jefferson apparently never explained why he explicitly called out this particular right, although according to this site, he was most assuredly influenced by George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights. I always thought it was a very human touch to assert insert happiness into such an austere political declaration. And I always thought it a brilliant touch to say we have a right to pursue happiness, but not a right of happiness itself. In that way, the Declaration differs actually differs from the Virginia Declaration of Rights which includes “the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” So in Virginia, they have to right both to pursue and obtain both happiness and safety. I’m glad that Jefferson decided to leave out the obtaining and the safety part. The right to pursue safety is rather baked into our DNA and sorry, Mr. Mason, our Creator did not guarantee that we would obtain either. In this way, our brilliant and spare founding document differs from so many modern declarations of human rights which make declarations of tangible things that people should be given if they don’t have them: food, clean water, shelter, health care. And now, apparently, the right to go through life un-aggrieved.
But back to my topic. I am in the tail end of the Baby Boom and still choke a bit when I have to say that I’m 60 years old. I don’t feel like I’m 60. Yes, there are aches and pains but that has been true since my 40s. But I don’t think I’m mature or wise enough to be 60. I expected more of myself by this age, more of a sense that I’d learned a few things. Of course, that doesn’t stop me from acting mature and wise with those younger than I am. I can do that because I’ve lived through things they haven’t, so in the current vernacular, I have “lived experiences” and we know those are unassailable as sources of pure wisdom. I’m not sure what an unlived experience might be, but I gather they carry less moral certitude. I actually get a kick out of the fact that I now can say: “Of course you don’t remember that because it happened before you were born”. For most of my life, it was my parents who had that privilege, having lived through the momentous events of the early 20th century: the Depression, WWII, the golden age of NY baseball, and the dawn of television. All things that seemed synonymous with forging character, fortitude, gratitude, and wonder. My lived experiences seem pallid compared to those, and rather than forging character, fortitude, gratitude, and wonder in our generation, they seemed to instill a sense of entitlement, anxiety, and whininess.
So in these last decades of my life, I have decided no longer to pursue happiness as I think the Boomers went at it with a little too much gusto. It is elusive, while contentment is not. The Time of Covid saw me bouncing back and forth between despairing of the state of the country vs. being absolutely delighted in small things like feeding the birds, taking a walk, working with my cat on my lap, and gardening. Things that my parents’ generation would have taken as the height of contentment, but I tended to think of as quite boring. I liked to be out and about all the time.
My cousin read a quote at my Aunt’s funeral: “Happiness is the art of making a bouquet with those flowers within reach.” There is a fine line between contentment and resignation, I know. I still despair of my country and my resolve to fight for it is firm. But I look back and see that it truly would have been a lost year if I had not been able to take joy in what was around me. I am profoundly grateful that all of these flowers were within reach and I was wise enough to gather them.
Just a few musings on the 5th of July.
Published in Group Writing
Good one GC. Re: pains; wait until you are almost 75. But containable, so far. So Dad, a WWII Marine Corps vet, orphan, alcoholic (he beat that) and lived until he was 95 gave me the greatest life lesson when I was 18: the object is to be happy. But only you can figure what it will be that will make you happy. He did not figure it out until he was in his 50s. I was much luckier.
A beautiful post, Gossamer Cat. I agree with so much of what you’ve said. I like your use of the word “contentment”; it’s even better than my go-to word, “satisfaction.” Every moment of every day is different, and we can make all the plans we wish to make, but as they say, “Man plans, G-d laughs.” We can simply enjoy what is right in front of us, and pursue a life of richness and service. Everything else will come out of those efforts. And they are more than enough. Thanks.
The greatest generation saw the horrors of world war. It was easy to appreciate life after this upheaval, to find contentment, and to pursue a good life. A car, a refrigerator, a stove, a home, children, a peaceful suburban existence, these were the things of a life well lived, and they were within just about everyone’s means. Men worked for companies, retired on a pension that included health insurance. Jobs were secure. Retirements were provided. But then, the government interceded. It was decided that government, collectively local, state and federal, had to make things better, force progress, provide equitable relief. They had to declare war on poverty, take over retirement funding, provide insurance for the old and poor, shift the burden of government to the rich and corporate interests, underwrite loans and mortgages, print currency, democratize other nations, and fund all these programs and the resultant excessive spending with debt and printed currency.
Government is no longer charged with protecting citizens rights, but with eroding them when they stand in the way of progressive initiatives.
We are now asking the question, which is more important, our rights (of free speech, of the press, from undue search and seizure, to arms, to property, to equal protection, to free and fair elections, to counsel) or government’s desire to force progress?
Behind these progressives are totalitarian fascists. They are exactly what they accuse constitutional conservatives of being. Behind their programs are dreams of perpetual power, and for this they will open our borders, take full advantage of the COVID health crisis, perpetuate the global warming hoax, and declare their opposition to be racist, white supremacist, and less than human. This is diabolical. They will never prevail.
My goal has always been Peace of Mind. Those things that give me peace of mind make me happy: not owing money or apologies, living up to obligations even when I don’t want to, doing my best at the tasks I set.
This is an excellent example of how the meanings of words and expressions can change over time: At the time the Declaration was written, one of the topics discussed by Enlightenment philosophers was indeed happiness, but what they meant was not “feeling happy” but rather achievement. Thus, the right to “the pursuit of happiness” did not mean the right to pursue pleasure (sorry, sixties hippies who liked to quote this), but the right to attempt to achieve all that one can according to one’s natural endowments; to pursue the full flowering of one’s potential. This was in fact an important issue at the time, because the hereditary aristocracies used their power to prevent the bulk of the population from even attempting to “rise above their station”.
I also seem to recall reading that the specific term “happiness” was used with some reference to the writings of Classical Greek philosophers, but am unsure about this.
To be fair, there were other problems as well: Life expectancy boomed, which played hell with actuaries’ estimates of how many years of retirement income and health care needed to be budgeted for. I suspect that greatly increased job mobility, starting in the sixties, also became a problem for the management of defined benefit pensions and contributed to the erosion of corporate concern for retirees (but how much was due to the rise of the MBA bean counters?) I do recall how at one time young men would job-hunt with the goal of finding an employer to stick with through retirement, not an employer whom they would leave after getting a few years’ experience as became the norm. And that connects to matters of school and university education and on-the-job training, and before you know it this could become a thread with several hundred comments from people with deeper experience than me.
I’ve heard it argued that, at the time, the dominant definition for the word happiness was “material prosperity”. The root word hap means “good fortune”. This older meaning still survives today in the antonym, hapless.
If Jefferson had wanted to describe a more spiritual form of well-being, he would have written “the pursuit of joy” instead of “the pursuit of happiness”.
At least, that’s the argument.
I should have dug deeper! Thank you for adding this and, in truth, achieving one’s potential is part of personal happiness. One of the reasons that I am content to slow down a bit is that I feel I did what I set out to do.
Yes, that makes more sense. I did not have time to dig too deeply into the meaning but @paulstinchfield made the same point above. Happy (and content) to learn something new.
I was looking for some old photographs and found a yellowed 3 X 5 card with a quote that looks as though it was typed on an old IBM Selectric. No memory of how I acquired it, but the sentences still ring true.
Thank you Susan. I was actually thinking of you when I wrote this because you have been expressing similar thoughts lately as you near the end of your treatments.
Hardly ever gets talked about.
Yes, that is true. We struggle a bit harder for those things now, but you shouldn’t have to live through a World War to be grateful for what you do have.
I have asked myself and answered myself. The spirit of 1776 still lives! We know we are going to have a big fight coming up on the meaning of the 4th. It is already starting this year. But so be it.
Never forget the shared intellectual roots of progressivism and fascism.
Happiness. I’ve always chafed at the inclusion of this, but I suppose I interpreted it differently than the “and they lived happily ever after” sense, in which the Beauty married and lived with her Prince Charming, perpetually smiling, bouncing on the balls of their feet, having an intelligent horse, a lovely bungalow and garden, and praising their well-behaved and superior children; but rather the option to pursue one’s deepest hopes, dreams and desires.
In both these senses can think of a few Ricochetti who would probably have both their “happiness” and their “happily ever after” largely taken away if bicycles were outlawed. A bicycle is an anachronism when it comes to transportation, but a thing very important to have and to use for them. For others it may be stereophonic equipment, or shooting equipment, or for the ladies… draperies? and shoes? and make-up?
The right to Pursue happiness also can be taken away by taking away the legality of their pursuit. When this happens, people may still try to hand-craft and ride a bicycle, but will have to keep their material possession and their use of it secret. But I don’t think this is the intent of the “right to the pursuit of happiness” either. So George Mason wasn’t entirely wrong.
Personally, I think I am like others in that I really like meat (and pasta and escargot, though this may be my own idiosyncrasy): thick red meat, black on the outside and red on the inside. The thought of an occasional PBJ, or pho, or Thai curry or an olive, or my beloved hard cheeses, if only just to break the monotony of crickets, meal worms and other larva as my main source of government-authorized sustenance.
I’ve been thinking about this lately. I think the shooting war, if it ever begins, will really begin when men across this country will be prohibited from, or priced out of, eating rare red meat.
And using sharp knives to cut it, and starting backyard fires to burn it.
You might say that the left is comprised of people who Pursue Happiness by depriving others of it.
Yes, like locking them in a closet. There are many ways to do this. In the Soviet Union a woman was both a gifted pianist, which she loved, and gifted biologist, which she didn’t. They decided that she would best serve the community as a biologist and so cut the tendons in the back of her hands so that she couldn’t play the piano any more, but, as she put it, could hold a test tube.
Today an editor of a top publication can lose his livelihood for saying a few unauthorized thoughts. And businessmen can have their establishments closed whimsically, and people who are saying or selling the wrong things have their bank accounts cancelled.
And corporations are apparently buying up housing to turn the population into eternal renters, and buying up farmland to control and alter the food supply and to prohibit self-sufficiency.
It surely seems like the right to pursue happiness is under assault.
And contentment must forever elude the true believers, as must joy, because to admit that they are content or take joy in something means that America is not the unrelieved hellhole they’ve convinced themselves we are. So that’s one consolation I guess. They must be completely miserable all the time.
I certainly agree with what you are saying here. (But this is actually Paul S’s quote.)
If I wake up and no one’s trying to shoot me or bomb my village, it’s a good day. The secret to happiness is low standards. 🥸
Agree completely MA. Only got my car broken into once last week but since nothing of value there didn’t lose anything. And the thug was kind enough not break a window is his (hers? theirs?) disappointment.
As I said, it’s a fine line between contentment and resignation!
Duly noted. And I will admit that I was a bit too lazy to go back and track down the original source.
“For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Well, it’s a good thing I finally stopped pursuing it!
This conversation is part of our Group Writing Series under the July 2021 Group Writing Theme: “We Hold These Truths (or Fictions).” Stop by soon, our schedule and sign-up sheet awaits.
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