I’m Happy. Should I Feel Guilty About That?

I share good news with family and friends less often than I used to. I’ve lost too many relationships that way.

Tell people you’re sick or you’ve lost your job and the sympathy just oozes from every pore. Tell them you just got an award and…crickets.

I’m happy. I really am. If I were to tell you all the reasons why (and there are many), it would probably irritate you. I might come across as a gloater, even if I were to dress it all up in the finery of gratitude. (And I am grateful.)

I haven’t always been happy. My life had a pretty miserable start. I could go into that, it might even make my happiness more tolerable. By why should that be the case? What’s the deal?

That wizened old grump Schopenhauer once observed, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Why is it, when we hear the news of someone’s death, we must suppress the urge to grin?”

“Rejoice with those that rejoice” is tougher than it sounds. And that’s revealing.

Enter Eudaimonia Man!

When it comes to happiness, Aristotle is my go to guy.

He’s great for so many reasons, not least his political incorrectness. He just lays it out there: some people have a greater “happiness potential” than other people.

The reason that’s so is certain conditions for happiness are enjoyed by some people more than they are by other people–health for instance. Hardly anyone can object to that. Everyone knows it’s better to be able-bodied than not. (There is that gal who blinded herself with bleach because she wanted sympathy…so maybe Aristotle’s point needs some nuanced handling here, but I think you get my point.)

But its easier to live with healthy friends than rich ones, or even tall ones. (Now we’re getting into that jolly land of envy.) It’s not that these people derive their happiness from a relative advantage, although that is unavoidable. It has more to do with a capacity for happiness. According to Aristotle, rich people should be happier than poor people, and tall people should be happier than short people. (Aristotle doesn’t know when to quit, he tells us that intelligent people should be happier than stupid people, as should men with lower voices than tenors. I could go on, but why prolong the suffering?)

This suffering is real, I’m not just poking fun. Aristotle saw it too. That’s why he noted that equality of condition is a prerequisite of friendship. And that’s why you lose friends when you enjoy some success. It’s lonely at the top.

That wizened old grump Schopenhauer once observed, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Why is it, when we hear the news of someone’s death, we must suppress the urge to grin?”

It’s when your old friends are gone that the pangs of guilt begin.

Not for them necessarily, you may be glad to be rid of them. But if you have any sense at all about how uneven the distribution of blessing is in this world, you can’t help feeling you don’t deserve the advantages you possess. You feel compelled to help people who are in need.

Then comes the realization, often after many attempts, that you can’t help people in the ways that you would like to.

First of all, people really don’t want your advice. And your gifts insult the best of them and make the worst of them dependent. For many powerful and accomplished people, trying to help others is the most difficult thing they’ve ever attempted. They almost always slink away feeling like failures. Either that, or they measure themselves by intentions rather than outcomes.

Some of them mentally enter a dreamland without distinctions. Strange things happen there. These Bernie Sanders types are just fine with guns so long as the Handicapper General can use them to keep the Harrison Bergerons of the world from rising. (And so long as Harrison is somebody else.) But the truly abled always rise, even on Animal Farm. We can’t engineer our way out of this. We need virtue.

I think there are at least two virtues that can help here. They’re not going to change the world, just make it more livable.

The first is noblesse oblige. And the second is contentment.

They’re modest. But they have this going for them. I think they make “rejoice with those who rejoice” a real possibility.

Last of all, it seems to me that guilt will always tincture the happiness of the blessed unless they are permitted some measure of forgetfulness–not that the envious will permit that if they can help it. But it’s true nonetheless.

I’ll be posting again on this theme. Here’s something to think about in the meantime: does wisdom make you happy, or does it make you miserable? (In case you’re wondering about Schopenhauer on that one–he opted for the second.)

Four hours later…

It occurred to me that I should add this…all of us have to live on both sides of this. There are people who enjoy advantages I do not, just as I enjoy advantages others do not. Noblesse oblige and contentment are virtues for everyone.