The Grasshopper #16: Happiness
Do I really want to tackle this?
Actually, I do. In fact I think I had to as soon as the topic came up in my internal conversation. I woke up this morning thinking about it and then looked out the window at the garden in front of the hotel next door. There is, this time of year, a kind of golden morning light you don’t get any other time of the year.
It’s high summer and everything is a lush green. The view outside my window was that lush green, infused with gold. You can’t not be happy when you glimpse that. And it helps that the cicadas started singing in the trees at dusk this week.
Is August the Saddest Month?
Strange title for a piece on happiness but that’s what came out and I have to go with it. And you might ask what all this has to do with writing. A reasonable question until you consider what drives a person to express themselves in a form that others can read, and interpret.
And their interpretation is probably wildly different than your intent. For example, you might think only a troubled person would write about happiness. And then title it something about sadness, revealing that true intent, but that’s not the case today.
When you write about things like viruses, politics, and climate change, as I do, you have to maintain your perspective to be convincing. You can be outraged or scared but there has to be a core level of happiness behind the writing. That outrage or fear drives you to write but the goal is to leave some hope along with it, otherwise the reader may not return.
Readers are extremely valuable and difficult to get. I value them all, excepting those rare trolls who threaten my life (it happens). Those I feel sorry for because their anger is so consuming they can no longer see that golden green light outside. But I always block them immediately.
It’s July 31st of another year. It’s that time when you see the first tree whose leaves are prematurely turning and you get that pang that summer will fade into the delicious nostalgia of fall.
I’m waxing poetic this morning because I’m writing about happiness, though I’ve barely touched upon the topic. There actually isn’t much to say about it- you either are happy or not. Writers seldom write about happiness because there is little conflict in it.
What we do write about is transformation. And transformation often involves periods of happiness as a character either discovers something about themselves or glimpses a reminder that no matter how bad things look there might be a silver lining.
“And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.” – Kurt Vonnegut
“Nothing thicker than a knife’s blade separates happiness from melancholy.” – Virginia Woolf
All writing could be seen as about transformation. In fiction, this is basic, but non-fiction often seeks to change minds or inform, both of which change the reader. Stories have to reflect change and I would argue that periods of happiness are essential to change because they help us regain perspective. I don’t strive for happiness, I recognize it when I’m feeling it and that recognition happens at odd times, moments between conflict or struggle or boredom.
The pause that refreshes, as the slogan says. Inserting these pauses into writing opens things up when the going has been rough, even if we, as readers, know the story is not going to devolve into unicornland. Unicornland is fundamentally boring, but a moment when a character or the writer stops for a second and savors whatever small thing they are occupied with are the moments I love as a reader.
And they are the moments most of us use to define happiness.
When I search for writer quotes on the topic they are often tinged or compared with darkness like the Virginia Woolf quote above. She is a good example because she had a dark disposition which eventually led to her suicide by filling her pockets with rocks and wading into a river, a method unique I think, to her. But she also wrote of the need for a room of one’s own, something women rarely had in her time, a place I imagined was where she could feel a moment of happiness.
When I chose this topic to write about I knew it would be a challenge. The challenge comes when you try to define something like happiness. There are self-help books devoted to the pursuit of happiness, a pursuit enshrined in the US Constitution as a fundamental right. Not the right to be happy, the right to pursue happiness.
I always take great pleasure in that phrase, the pursuit of happiness. It’s a quest where you cannot know where you are going or how you are going to get there but suddenly you glimpse it and everything is alright, if only for that moment.
I have one final thing to say about this subject and it relates to this newsletter. I am only writing this thing because I enjoy it. In some distant future I may offer a subscriber version but only when I feel like it delivers some kind of value on a regular basis. But right now I am happy to use it to share my thoughts about a thing I love, writing, something that makes me happy!
That’s for hanging in there with me. If you think anyone else would find this stuff interesting please share it. M