“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
At first glance, it’s the second half of the sentence that seems interesting. Yet, it’s the first half that’s more questionable. Unhappiness, I can imagine, might have varying causes. But is happiness necessarily monolithic? Is the happiness of happy people alike? It’s easier for me to think about this in the context of individuals rather than families – and families are, in a sense, an aggregation of individuals – so perhaps the conclusions carry over.
Superficially, of course, I can point to differences between happy people. One person derives his happiness from his family, another from her work, a third from leisure, and another from recreational pursuits. But those are only details, not a difference in kind. You would, I think, notice more similarities than differences on meeting them.
So, if unhappiness has particular grounds – illness, work, poverty and the like – which make every unhappy family unhappy in its own way, happiness does too. A specific unhappiness can spread itself like a blanket over a person’s being, enveloping them in a shroud of gloom. So might a specific happiness, as Saint-Exupéry shows in The Little Prince, where a single flower on a single star is enough for someone to make all the stars beautiful.
Therefore, broader categories are more helpful than specific causes for this analysis. Søren Kierkegaard – or more particularly, his aesthetic avatar- locates unhappiness in the past or the future.
But when the hoping individual would have a future which can have no reality for him, or the remembering individual remember a past which had had no reality for him, then we have the genuinely unhappy individuals.
The Unhappiest One, Søren Kierkegaard
Kierkegaard describes the unhappy as being amongst the hoping and the remembering individuals. The one who remembers a past that never happened – as of a person who, ‘never had a childhood himself…but discovered, say by becoming the teacher of children, all the beauty that lies in childhood’. Or the one who hopes for a future he knows cannot be realized, such as an infertile person wanting children. Even present unhappiness, one might argue, is included here. The unhappiness that stems from serious illness or impoverishment, is, arguably, a blow to a future which might not have reality anymore, as much as a present setback.
Happiness too, I think, can be categorized by the tenses, though here I would opt for the future and the present, rather than the future and the past, as Kierkegaard did for unhappiness. Perhaps it is possible to be a happy rememberer, someone happy today because of what was before, basking in the past being sufficient to make their present a happy one. In that case, given that the past is immutable (though one’s memories of it need not be), either they remain etched in permanent happiness, or, they find the past no longer sufficient for their present. In the former case, nothing remains to be said about one who in happiness completes their remaining journey to the grave. In the latter, the happy rememberers now find themselves in one of the other categories.
One can be happy with how things are in the present, or with how they might be in the future. Some, happy with work, with chilling peacefully after work, with family, with relationships. Others, content with the same things, but happier with what they are working towards. A static sort of happiness, and a dynamic one – happy where you are, or happy while moving toward something.
Which happiness is better, which ‘should’ one want, and the like are pointless to ponder. Happiness is elusive enough; it makes little sense to churlishly reject the happiness you do have, or might conceivably attain. Whichever works, works, unless one is unhappy being happy.
These are, of course, two broad categories, ever ready to be packaged and sold for consumption. At one end is the version that happiness is in hustling and grinding and ‘changing the world’. At the other, that happiness is in freedom, to be able to do nothing, to bask in eternal leisure and indulge in perpetual recreation. Obviously, this is for marketing purposes; you can’t proselytize and sell if you remain lukewarm and moderate. Toned down though, the former is having something to work on or towards, and the latter, being at peace with things.
Naturally, the question arises – why not both? And just as obviously, it always is some mixture of both, in differing proportions. Someone working towards something would somewhat like what he works on day to day; someone happy with how things are can look forward to milestones, to holidays or the like. That banality aside, I think it is possible to know, or at least have an idea, of which category one leans towards, and the intensity of that leaning.
Why would I care about any of this? For one, that when I am pushed a form of happiness that doesn’t align with mine, I don’t feel a false sense of deprivation. Too often, whether for ego gratification or for attention or for monetization, someone will peddle an idealized and touched up narrative – of awe-inspiring grinding or beautiful idling – as the summum bonum, the greatest good of life. And if I’m not rooted in what I do know is mine, the more the likelihood I am swept away by what is someone else’s.
For another, that I can think of what I want to do, rather than what I think I should want to do, or what I think others would think is cool to do. Which is asking the question if I want what I think I want because I actually want it, in that it genuinely contributes to my happiness, or because I want others to know and see that I have it. It might even be that the two are not different, that my happiness itself derives from and depends upon what others think of me – a thought I don’t much care for, but nevertheless possible.
And so that I know that I’m not bluffing about sour grapes if I reject what passes for happiness. It’s a common defensive tactic to pretend to not want something you know you won’t get. To see a rich or successful or hard working – or the opposite, an idle and carefree person – and claim you’d rather not be like that. Perhaps you wouldn’t. But perhaps you would. It’s easier to know what you wouldn’t want to be like when you know what you would want to be like.
Another reason is that so I don’t try to peddle my ideas of happiness onto another. It’s one thing to not let another’s notions define my notions; the least I can do is extend that courtesy back. And perhaps be able to accept, even appreciate, that what someone may like is not what I like. That what enthralls them could bore me, just as what enthralls me might bore them.
Of course, environment matters too. The stereotype of Europe is of static happiness, of America, dynamic. Those well off often incline towards dynamism (unless they pursue hedonism); those with limited means, towards stasis, as much because it’s easy for the former to move ahead, and difficult for the latter. And the reverse is true as well, the high-fliers who drop everything to chill or the underprivileged who hustle hard. Opponents of free will might argue one simply buys into the culture they’re born in, the other buys into the contrast. That probably demeans individual agency and the ability to decide for oneself excessively (akin to Schopenhauer’s ‘A man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.’); nevertheless, to some extent, is undeniable.
The unhappy hoping individual was not able to be present to himself in his hope, similarly with the unhappy rememberer. The combination can only be this: that what prevents him being present in hope is memory, and what prevents him being present in memory is hope… He is forever quite close to the goal and the same moment at a distance from it; he now discovers that what it is that makes him unhappy, because now he has it, or because he is this way, is precisely what a few years ago would have made him happy if he had had it then, whereas then he was unhappy because he did not have it
The Unhappiest One, Søren Kierkegaard
The unhappiest one is the one neither able to be present to himself in his hope, nor in his memories, and for that, his present moment is unhappy. The happiest, perhaps, is present to himself as well as present in hope; happy with what he’s working towards, and with what he’s doing, his present, which soon becomes what he’s done, his past.