Are You Happy?

Having recently started to write again, I have been trying to pound away at the keyboard to get some thoughts down on this one. The following article is one of the toughest that I have written so far, and for a couple of reasons. One is that the concept itself has been quite difficult to articulate adequately, and two because I am not absolutely clear about where I stand myself. This of course does not mean that everyone is not clear on this issue. Maybe the vast majority of people are very certain of where they stand, though I am not.

A couple of weeks ago my son and I were walking down to the supermarket, when he asked me what seemed like a very innocuous question. He turned to me and said - Dad, are you happy? Of course the urge to respond was immediate. However something made me hesitate before I answered - probably my natural compulsion to hedge on giving definitive responses. And that one moment made me delve deep inside myself to seek the truth of how I felt. That one moment was all it took to have the question burn itself into my mind - a question which I still find difficult to answer unequivocally.

I have debated, in between the complete spectrum of yes and no, and finding no definitive answer have also resorted to questioning the question itself. This is not a fair question - is it? I mean, don’t we always express happiness in terms of a specific thing? Maybe it is because my son asked this question, and he did not know any better than to ask it. How many times have you asked this question to others or have it asked to you? To be honest, in my experience, never! The proper question would be - are you happy with whatever, and that whatever could be anything from your last meal, to your day, your new car, your colleagues etc. In that perspective it is easy to answer in the definitive and there is no stigma or deeper meaning attached to the answer.

However the same question asked in general, takes on a whole new meaning. Now it starts to encompass every sphere of one’s life, and who would have the arrogance to answer in the definitive yes, and who the guts to give an unequivocal no? Forget responding to someone else - how many of us can even answer truthfully to ourselves? When I ask myself that question, I really have no answer. I am happy about quite a few specific aspects in my life, and like most others would like to change a few others. But that does not result in overall happiness or unhappiness. Let me try and clarify what each response would indicate to someone on the receiving end.

Let us start with a wholehearted yes. This simple affirmative means that one is happy in all aspects of one’s life - be it health, career, family, relationships, friendships, finances, etc. This person believes that they are in the absolutely right place and given the option would change not one teeny tiny element in their life. They have no regrets about the past, and importantly enough, it goes without saying that there is not a cloud on their horizon, as they look into their future. No major stresses that keep them awake, no worries to blot their serendipity. They fully expect that life will not blindside them, and even if it does, divine intervention or their own innate ability will handle any curved balls that will be thrown their way.

On the other hand would anyone be willing to confess to being unhappy in general? If so why continue, why persevere with living unless there is hope to turn the situation around? The pall of gloom is expected to lift and the clouds clear away. There are always aspects of our lives, even when we are down in the dumps which keep us floating, give us sustenance, like a jewel tucked away from the clutches of thieves who have taken everything else.

The emotion of happiness or its opposite unhappiness, is reactionary by nature. We are happy when things are going as per plan, unhappy when something changes them. The emotion is also relative by nature, i.e. if we are caught in a traffic jam we are happy if we can outpace the car ahead of us, and unhappy if someone behind overtakes us. The fact that we are all caught in a traffic snarl is lost on us.

I would think that all of us have experienced moments on both sides of the spectra, in our lives. There would have been times of absolute ecstasy when just about everything seemed right with the world. We might also have gone through times of despair, when all seemed lost (these times are normally dulled by memory). Both of these are two sides of the same coin. One cannot experience one without having lived through the other. Without getting acquainted with sorrow, one would not recognize joy even if it came and slapped one in the face.

Maybe extremes of this emotion are felt more in our earlier years and as we grow older, mature, and acquire wisdom (hopefully), our emotional spectrum diminishes. It does not fluctuate as much, which keeps our lives on a more even keel, and prevents us from making irrational decisions late in, or probably all through our lives. Maybe as our skepticism and cynicism increases, our passions diminish in tandem. Experience makes us wiser and as we go through the various stages of our lives, we are maybe subconsciously diminishing the arc within which the pendulum sways so that, though we might never experience absolute and unadulterated joy, we also avoid the trauma of clinical depression. It could be that the more appropriate question to ask, would be the reverse i.e. are you unhappy? Then maybe most of us would say no. Maybe happiness is a more aspirational emotion, something that we work towards, but never achieve. Or maybe the right term would be ephemeral - just when you thought you grasped it, it evaporates like a dream in the cold light of day. Maybe happiness for each of us is just a step away from where we currently stand. If only we had “this” or could get “that”, if only "this" could change or "that" could go away, then we would be happier. I do know that there are lots of hypochondriacs, alarmists, perfectionists who could never be able to answer in the positive. Same goes with highly driven individuals, who will always feel they are one step away from their goal, whether professionally or personally, which keeps them from true contentment. Maybe we are more comfortable expressing our state of happiness at a point in time, rather than over a period of time.

My wife, being asked to vet this article before I published it commented, that this article could lead to the perception that I am not happy. In light of what has happened in the last few days in terms of the global economic meltdown, I wonder whether there are too many people out there who can profess to be ecstatic today ha ha.

Having given it more thought though, I feel that maybe it is a fair question to ask. I am content with my life, love my wife, my kids and my family. Have great friends with whom I really enjoy hanging out with. I really do not have any major regrets from the past and have a very optimistic view of the future. It still remains an extremely difficult question to answer, at least for me. Maybe I am reading too much into the question and maybe most of you would have no problems in answering it. For you then, you would never understand the brouhaha.

So then, are you happy?