R U Happy?

1350 words, 5 minute read

“So, Mr. Smith, are you happy in your Job?”

Happy enough, yes.

“Are you happy in your marriage?”

Absolutely!

“Are you happy at home?”

Hey, what is this?

“I’m just trying to determine whether or not you’re happy.”

Then why not just ask me?

Of course I’m not happy!

As Shakespeare knew only too well, life is a series of transparent roles. Roles follow one another sequentially and roles are embedded in one another hierarchically. Each role is a 2 dimensional representation of 4 dimensional reality. Stacking roles atop one another, like transparent slides on an ancient overhead projector, adds a 3^rd dimension…but we’re still one dimension short of a World.

These roles are…roles. They are what we are pretending to be since being something (or someone) is always a matter of make-believe.

One Halloween a young grandson was wearing a Captain America costume. Innocently, I asked, “Are you going as Captain America this year?” He was justly insulted, “I am Captain America!” Bingo! He had reminded me that there is no difference between being and pretending. How do such genius children tolerate their dull adult caregivers?

You are neither something nor (same thing) someone. You are who you are after all your roles are stripped away. You are who you are when you are no longer anyone. You are ‘the you’ that is not something, or someone, the you that is no thing and no one.

Following a pattern found in several Native American languages, you might be called, He who Puts on Roles. Importantly, and with a grudging nod to Bertrand Russell , ‘putting on roles’ is not itself a role.

You may or may not be happy in your roles. You are slightly more likely to be happy than not since you made choices that pointed you in these directions…but then again, things change, don’t they? You married for love. That launched your marriage in a positive direction. But not every ship reaches Troy!

A doctoral dissertation could be written on who’s happy in what roles…and who’s not…and why. This does not concern us here. If we accept that someone may or may not be more or less happy in some particular role, then from there it’s just a matter of doing the math.

How come? Because a role is not an organism; it’s en soi, not pour soi (Sartre). A role can be reduced to an algorithm; it can be measured, quantified, and represented (via code or map). Therefore questions of happiness are decidable. Youare not a role, you are not an algorithm. You cannot be reduced to a sum of elements. You are always undecidable!

Being happy in a role is a matter of fit, of being comfortable. But ‘being happy’ without reference to any role is another matter altogether. Are you happy just being? Not being X, just being? My gut reaction is, “You can’t be!” But we’ll explore that hypothesis, and possible exceptions, below.

You can’t be, because your existence is in every important respect, and to every measurable degree, an accident. The world could easily close up around you and still be a world…as it was before you were born and as it will be after you die – different, maybe, but still the world.

But where does that leave you? You are infinitesimal, you are de trop! (w – є) = w and (w + є) = w but (w – є) ≠  (w + є). You can never fit! You are the miscut jigsaw piece. You are the ‘one too many’ at the end of a rough night.

You can never be comfortable in life the way you may be in a relationship (e.g. a marriage) or an undertaking (e.g. a job). In fact ‘not fitting’ is who you are. All the same, we’d prefer to fit. It would be so much more comfortable! But then we’d have no excuse for existential angst, would we?

You are poised on the very razor’s edge of Being. You exist. But your being adds nothing to Being. Being is, whether you are or not. What could be worse? Too big for oblivion but not big enough to make a difference.

In Gregory Bateson’s terminology, you are a difference that makes no difference. You are the point at which all differences vanish in pure subjectivity, i.e. absolute freedom (Sartre).  You are the event horizon of your own personal black hole. You are, but you add nothing to what is. Is this not the worst of all possible worlds, to be neithersomething nor nothing.

Every day you frantically engage in activities that seem to have important consequences, and they do…inside a bubble. Outside that bubble, however, they are of no consequence at all. You are like a child blowing the most intricate and beautiful bubbles, only to have them evaporate in thin air leaving no trace of identity, quality, or pattern…just generic soap film. What had been soap was always soap and still is soap today. Shapes and patterns are de trop.

To be happy, a person needs to be content with who she is (or was or is becoming), i.e. comfortable in her own skin. It is my contention that no one who is aware of their true existential situation (above) can possibly be happy because no one can ever be comfortable. Those who say they are fall into one of the following categories:

(1)    They do not understand the question.

(2)    They are deceived. They genuinely mistake the roles they play for who they are.

(3)    They are lying…

o   to meet the expectations of their interlocutors.

o   to spare the feelings of loved ones.

o   to protect their image of themselves.

o   to avoid being objects of pity.

But I did admit (above) that there might be some exceptions to this generalization. If so, those exceptions will not be found in the realm of roles or in an index of identities. Someone could only be happy if something/one relates to them as they relate to their roles.

I am a salesman; I sell things. Or I am a barber, a pipe fitter, a lover, an acrobat, a friend, etc. These are my roles, historical, current, or potential. We have established that I can be happy in terms of one or more of my roles but not be happy per se.

But what if an entity exists that can be happy in terms of me as I am happy in terms of the personae (roles) I assume. Just as I transcend my roles even as I am immanent in them, such an entity would transcend me while being intimate with me.

What sort of entity might that be? Am I talking about God? Well, yes, God would certainly qualify. But so would any ‘higher power’ or anyone for that matter, even you dear reader, as long as they transcend me even as they are immanent.

What our poets call ‘love’ is really a relationship of mutual transcendence between two immanent beings. I transcend you as you transcend me. We are each other’s higher power. In the context of love, my roles vanish and my self expands. I no longer live for me but for us. I am not happy unless we are happy but if we are, I am.

I would like to take credit for this idea, but that honor goes to the grandfather of Western philosophy, Anaximander of Miletus, 6^th century BCE. As far as we know, he was the first to suggest that ontogenesis is a function of mutual recognition and respect, i.e. granting reck. I am because you are. I can love because I am loved. I am happy loving and being loved or I am not happy at all.