Psych-Out

Henry Miller photo

“I have no money, no resouces, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.”
Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

Happiness. Even as we chase it, we look upon it with suspicion. In the movie Annie Hall, Alvy (Woody Allen) runs across what looks like a happy couple.

Alvy: You look like a really happy couple? Are you?
Woman: Yeah.
Alvy: Yeah? So, how do you count for it?
Woman: I am very shallow and empty, and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.
Man: And I’m exactly the same way.

Happiness is not the domain of idiots, but that of the man/woman willing to throw him or herself into the mix of life’s uncertainties. Yoshida Kenko wrote, “The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty.” If you get what Kenko is saying, then you may be able to grasp what it takes to be happy.

Happiness scrapes against our species’ natural inclination toward dissatisfaction. More food. More money. Sounds good, yet the gratification we feel from more and more only becomes less and less. On the other hand, if you let your guard down and things get bad enough, you can be taken out of the game completely.

from Garden of Earthly Delights (Hell), Hieronymus Bosch

It’s a sad fact of life — bad outcomes outnumber good ones. Loss gathers far more of our attention, than success. Our perceptual and emotional circuitry tends more toward fixating on our problems than celebrating our victories. Our inherent penchant for dissatisfaction is even encoded in our language. There are far more words for negative emotions than for positive ones.

If survival is deep inside our genetic programming, then being able to anticipate danger (even if wrong) is the best strategy. Enjoy those figs by the newly found watering hole too long, that saber-tooth tiger might jump out and make that fig your last. Remember, our genes only “care” for our well-being only so much as we can do the things we need to do to survive, mate, and pass those genes on. Feeling good about it all after the fact is incidental.

The good news? We are the only species who can tell our genes to go jump in the lake. But happiness takes work. It takes imagination and inner mettle to hold to it. At times, it is grainy and hard-edged, at others graceful and flowing.

Happiness is neither simple nor shallow. It requires a wide lens to navigate the complex, sometimes dismal horizon. The truly happy person owns his choices, without blame, while throwing himself at life in full view of this world’s nastiness, stupidity, and sorrow. She meets her fair share of grief, sadness, and trauma along the way. His ache is no less.

Henry Miller & friend

But one thing that seems to separate out the truly happy from the rest of us is the capacity to see something else beyond the immediate struggle. Within has been cultivated the deep abiding belief that with enough resilience, creativity, and capacity to endure, there is a way through. Happiness requires a refusal to resign oneself in face of whatever dark clouds break the horizon.

“The aim of life is to live, and live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.” Yes, Mr. Miller. Yes.

Henry Miller. Does this sound like happiest man alive? Perhaps, yes.

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Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. The Evolving Self: a Psychology for the Third Millennium. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.

Foster, Rick & Hicks, Greg. How We Choose to be Happy. New York: Perigee Books, 1999.

Wiederman, Michael. “Why It’s So Hard to be Happy,” Scientific American Mind Vol. 18, No. 1 (2007): 36-43.