-
HAPPINESS
Robert Coles
1No
other
country
in
the
world
has
worked
the
notion of happiness into
its Constitution, the very source
of
its national authority, the way the founding
fathers of
the
United
States
of
America
chose
to
do
when
they
linked
the pursuit of happiness with life and with
liberty
as a trio of utterly
inalienable rights. Not that happiness
was,
thereupon,
defined.
Anyway,
a
was
specified
---
perhaps
a
rather
knowing
decision,
in
the
tradition
of
Don
Quixote,
that
the
journey
or
way
is
better
than
the
inn.
a
psychoanalytic
supervisor of
mine used to tell me, again and again, as I
presented
information
to
him
about
my
patients,
something people yearn for.
I'd
know
the
next
sentence:
When
they
have
it,
they've
redefined
it,
so
they
can
keep
searching.
Again,
one
thinks of Cervantes
hero- not to mention any number of
restless heroes and heroines in the
novels of, say, George
Eliot or Hardy
or D. H. Lawrence.
2What is
happiness? The word itself only appeared
in our English language during the
sixteenth century, and
is
etymologically
and,
yes,
spiritually
connected
to
the
word
---
which,
of
course,
has
to
do
with
the
occurrence of an event. Happiness in
Shakespeare's time,
and later as well,
referred to good fortune, good luck to
favorable
circumstances
visited,
somehow,
on
a
particular
person
who
registered
such
a
state
of
affairs
subjectively with a condition of good
cheer, pleasurable
feeling. One was
satisfied with one's situation, glad to be
in one's given place and time by virtue
of how one's life
has gone. The
emphasis is, put differently, upon fate -- an
almost
external
force.
To
be
sure,
individuals
craved
pleasure,
money,
power,
territory,
a
certain
woman,
a
certain
man
--
but
was
not
in
itself
sought.
Rather,
a
person's
personal
and
workaday
success
was
noted
by
that
person,
and
thankfully
acknowledged-
his
or
hers
by
virtue
of
divine
grace
or
the
stars
and
their
mysterious doings, or, quite simply, a
series of fortuitous
events
3Without
question
there
were
different
interpretations
of
what
prompts
happiness,
and
what
constitutes it. For
many devoutly religious people (to this
day), a stroke of business success, a
marriage that works,
the
emergence
over
time
of
strong,
intelligent
well-behaved
children
who
seem
able
and
content
with
their
lot
in
life
are
all
signs
of
sorts,
evidence
of
God's
favor.
For those who don't know what to believe (about
this
life,
and
.our
place
or
purpose
on
earth),
happiness
seems
something
accidental,
contingent,
or,
at
best,
a
feeling for which one has
worked hard indeed. But now
wearer a
bit ahead of, ourselves, historically: years ago,
there
was a
sense
of awe about
happiness--as
if
it
were
visited upon some in accordance with
the unfathomable
workings of an
inscrutable universe. It was only in more
recent times, as men and women became
more the center
of this world (in’
their own minds, more the makers, the
doers, the ones who wield and see the
consequences, that
happiness
became,
with
everything
else,
a
goal,
a
purpose, or, as those hard working,
ambitious rationalists
who framed our
Constitution put it something for which
a
is
waged,
No
longer
does
happiness
happen
happiness is
obtained.
4But again the
question has to be asked: what was
this
which
increasingly
became
mentioned
by people in
England and America from, say, 1600 or so
onward?
The
English
poet
Alexander
Pope,
always
one
to
render
a
quotable
statement,
once
exclaimed
Happiness! Then he tried his
hand at spelling the matter
out:
being's
end
and
aim!
Good,
Pleasure,
Ease,
Content!
Whatever
thy
name.
''An
interesting
way
of
regarding an elusive
quality of mind and heart. First, the
avowal that, the possession of
happiness is connected to
our
very
purpose
in
life,
to
the
central
thrust
of
our
human striving, to our
aspirations as the peculiar creature
which
--
well,
has
just
that,
the
capacity
to
have
aspirations. Then, a
kind of bafflement: the poet, handy
with words as he was, surrenders to the
puzzling variety
of hope and direction
and orientation among us mortals.
He
makes
a
list,
a
various
one
at
that;
and
yes,
the
list
still works as we consider
“
happiness.
”
5For
some,
is
yet
what
counts:
happiness
as
the
inner
feeling
that
corresponds
to
a
moral
perception of the part of a person.
to
God
and
country;
I
have
lived
as
I
was
taught
it
is
right to live, and I'm
ready to die happy--the words of an
ordinary
twentieth
century
American
working
woman
a
nurse of fifty, actually, who'd raised
her two children well
lived out a
solid, satisfying marriage with her optometrist
bus band oncologists, and, she would
sometimes add, her
minister.
and then added,
God
that
way.
I'll
be
dying
soon
and
I
know
it.
I
don't
pray to God that He give me
more
life; I pray to God
that
the life I've already lived not be
judged too bad and too
sinful when I
meet Him. I think I've been a fairly decent
person,
and
so
I'm
not
afraid.
To
tell
the
truth,
except
when I'm in pain, I'm quite happy.
6Pope's next
category is
of medical and psychiatric
work, I find that second line
of
response ever on the minds of today's men and
women,
especially
the
young.
I
happen
to
give
a
course
at
Harvard
College(and
another,
similar
one,
at
Harvard
Medical
School)
titled
and
Social
Inquiry.
We
read
poets,
documentary
essayists,
and
novelists
who
have, in their own ways, tried to
figure out what men and
women want out
of life, and why. After exposure to the
likes of James Agee and George Orwell,
Tillie Olsen and
Flannery
O'Connor
Walker
Percy
and
Ralph
Ellison,
Dorothy Day and
Simone Weil, and, not least, those three