Happiness 5,833 Miles Away
Moving to another country invariably sets off a wave of self-reflection, self-doubt, and other forms of bountiful, shameless, self-obsession in the newly landed immigrant. (Unless of course you’re this guy I once dated who traveled across Europe for nearly a year only to tell me that it was “cool,” and couldn’t think of anything he had learned about himself or anyone else from the experience. He was definitely not the kind of winner they put on Wheaties boxes.)
The purging (or maybe the temporary putting away) of things I didn’t need and haven’t yet missed has prompted me, as I sit in this studio apartment on the ground floor of one of many buildings with colorful shutters, to consider what I have and need, what I don’t have and need, what I have and don’t need, and most importantly, what I have that is making my head spin like an exorcist’s wet dream. Too often we are told to be thankful for what we have, instead of lamenting what we don’t have. What they’ve neglected to tell us is that we also need to consider what we do have that’s making us terribly unhappy to the point of tears.
I’ve spent most of my growing-up-years cowering in the shadow of a parent’s favorite cliché: “You should appreciate what you have.” Now that I’m grown, I cower less and get indignant more, but shaking off the oppression of decades of guilt is never easy. It’s true that if one were to make a sweeping generalization using that popular statement (its native and most comfortable instantiation), you should never take things for granted. Of course, you shouldn’t take for granted both the fact that you have cold gruel to eat and the possibility that there are better things to eat than cold gruel, for example, Chicago deep dish pizza.
This is where I get riotously confused. You’re threatened your entire life with accusations of your lack of appreciation, so for years you never stop to think that perhaps you deserve better than cold gruel, that yes, cold gruel will keep you alive but it’s far from the happiness that is Chicago deep dish pizza. You then become torn between this chiding consciousness constantly alerting you to your ingratitude, and the question that, if life is only about appreciation and not about happiness, then what’s the point?
Perhaps the confusion is really between happiness and hedonism. If you were my mother, you would say that desiring Chicago deep dish pizza is hedonistic. If you were me, you would say that desiring Chicago deep dish pizza because you found out it has the same food-like characteristics as cold gruel but tastes amazingly better is improving your level of happiness — and then your eyes would dart about furtively and your hands would start sweating as you look about you to see if anyone has heard your blatantly hedonistic statement.
I suppose if suffering makes you happy (and for some people the idea that their suffering improved someone else’s life does indeed have this effect) then by all means, keep eating your cold gruel. In the meantime, I’ve realized that appreciation isn’t just about cherishing what you have no matter how it affects your emotional health. It’s about choosing the things that make you shiny, fat, and satisfied, and casting off the things that barely keep you alive, the things that cause you great unenjoyment, or the things that people think should satisfy you. And who better to know what makes you happy, other than yourself?
