The Controversy Surrounding Happiness

Swatting at cherry blossoms, camelia bushes and random insects with a stick, Fiona trudged along Merriweather Street - still seething at the so-called "intervention" in the guidance office that the rash Mr. Girello had so vainly attempted, with his smarmy, obsessive need to "change the course of destiny" for students unlucky enough to be sent his way. There was much to resent as far as his method was concerned: his love of numbers and hard data, his need for "track records" and "proven statistics" as a measure of his own aptitude as a cartographer of human productivity,  his harsh manner of badgering people off of their "wrong course" onto his "proper path" - transporting them, like rabbits in some ill-conceived, tortuous lab experiment, from their familiar grassy knoll into a foreboding, dank, dark, sterile, steely, indoor environment; how she disdained his middlebrow conception of the "good life for all." From a distance, she saw her calm, serene, empath/friend, Marci,  sitting cross-legged on her front lawn, with eyes closed and chestnut hair pulled back into braids, half-smiling and somehow taking in all of the surrounding universe, especially the school bus dropping off grade-school kids a half-mile away, anticipating their scampering past, slightly in advance of Fiona's arrival. The children marched by as expected at 3: 17 p.m. And then came Fiona with her dark cloak green sweater, ruby-red shoes and autumn-inspired baseball cap. Almost hyperventilating, she found herself walking swiftly up the driveway to the place where Marci sat meditating, glaring down at her intently without speaking until Marci said "Let me guess..." and Fiona said "Walk with me...I need to vent concerning that stupid manbeast... " and so the two began their daily ritualistic foray (repeated on alternating days) in search of miniscule edible items of sacred importance, including, but not limited to, various flavors of gourmet gelato and/or coffee. Without provocation, Fiona went on about this stupid man, this wretched meddler...this macho poseur with the short-cropped hair and the form-fitting Armani sweaters, how unforgivable it was of him to accuse, to intimidate, to harass, with his arrogant, unremitting tone - barely allowing for replies - shutting down any hint of real conversation, revealing with every bromide his condescension toward the impaired, misguided younger generation. What was it that he said that upset you so much? I mean...usually...you can just tune people out... Marci just had to find out. Oh well - with him - everything is a travesty - Haven't you gotten trapped in his little office - ever - with the door left open so other people can listen in on the conversation? He was - just - atrocious - especially what he said about happiness and what all people need to do as part of some recipe for happiness. It was so wrong...I could even begin to explain it.  - And were you able to even give your opinion? - Oh I gave him my opinion. I always give my opinion. I wanted to say 'Look Freak!' but I held my tongue. I said: isn't it obvious that there cannot be a single life-script or formula for success that everyone has to follow...I said happiness takes an infinite number of forms...and who are you to say that there is only one "responsible path" to follow. I hate that term!  And he kept going on about the "rules" and "parameters" that limit and confine and hem us in - as if we were all chickens in a coop! I lost it at one point. I said: I'm not interested in your logic. I don't care about what other people do...and where they go to school... what kind of car they drive...what they wear... what souvenirs they collect ... how they recreate...what their perfect diet is... what they hope to accomplish or not accomplish...how they define misery and failure. It has nothing to do with me...I don't follow other people's rules! And that really annoyed him. And he came back with What are you - some kind of Anarchist? And I said. I don't follow other people's rules. There are no rules to follow (except the unwritten ones that no one ever mentions because they're too self-evident). But for some reason - Marci  - usually so sympathetic - was not quite satisfied - could not leave it as is - without excavating an ounce of plausibility within Mr. Girello's generally flawed and blusterous argument. She just had to play Devil's advocate...But don't you think, she said, that some people are like... just kind of lost... and they DO need advice...a certain kind of advice...to steer them off of an extreme self-destructive path? You know the people I mean...just aimless, floundering...craving direction... Yes, yes. yes! came the reply Fiona was more than a little annoyed. You think Mr. Girello and his ilk is going to offer real help - useful advice - to these poor, unfortunate dregs that the high school spews out every year. Marci  - you can't be serious. Marci spied the gelato shop two blocks off. It's just that when you say that there aren't any rules to follow.... - Except for the unwritten ones - please don't misquote me - Okay except for the basics that everyone understands - but to say that we don't have things in common - like wanting to avoid needless suffering --- well, it just makes me wonder ...because these poor unfortunates that we keep referring to - I mean - they sort of do need structure - I mean guidance - to help them avoid the worst possible scenarios - and yes - they want people to tell them what to do (or what not to do rather) - They appreciate that - if not from their local guidance counselor then from someone else...

Mr. Sympatico or The Agony of Egos

Rumors swirled around Mr. Sympatico and his storied past. Some believed that, with his "far-away stare" and walking-wounded gait, he had done time with the army,  had seen death up close, by way of some accidental tour of duty involving hand-to-hand combat in some forgotten war...or had lost a loved one (a spouse, a child, a sibling) quite recently in fact; that he had been committed, albeit briefly, to a mental institution, that he had served time on a chain gang in Alabama; that he had been a drug rehab counselor until relapsing on oxycontin; that he had seen a UFO; that he believed in magic crystals; that he had once lived out on the streets; that he worked for the circus, first as a juggler, and later as an acrobat until his back gave out.  The students wanted to know the truth about him, but they were as yet unable to find out. Everyone had a theory about this lanky, erudite, easily-distracted and somewhat disheveled, benevolently grumpy middle-aged teacher whose career seemed to be on a steady downward slide ever since what became known as "the incident" - about which, likewise, no one could agree. A vague cloud of controversy followed him everywhere - and seemed to be tangentially related to his obstinately "philosophical" attitude - a skeptical habit of mind that inevitably aroused suspicion insofar as it found opportunities to challenge Humean nay-sayers as often as suspected true believers.  They called him Sympatico because no one could pronounce Symkomniak - his real name. He was said to be in a relationship with various eccentric suitors, (and perhaps most recently in a secret liaison with Ms. Veridian) but beyond that, his own familial connections and romantic involvements remained fuzzy at best. Like Immanuel Kant on his daily rounds in Konigsberg, Mr. S. could be seen on a regular basis fervently meandering down select hallways and corridors, working his way from one end of the school to the other, until arriving at his normal snack-time perch - a bench opposite the exit door near the gymnasium, where every morning at 10:05 a.m. he would make use of that briefly-alloted, 10 minutes interval by scrutinizing the plaques and trophies along the wall,  staring fixedly at a glass display that he deferentially called the "haunted photographs" - a set of long, rectangular, black and white portraits encased in glass - mementos of clubs and teams and superlative students of prior decades. At such moments, it was not uncommon for him to meet up with students passing by him seemingly at random - usually members of the fledgling prophecy club - who sought him out as their unofficial mentor - and could not help themselves from gathering facts and anecdotes as to what exactly "the incident" entailed. The old soul, who prided himself on being the the most far-sighted and philosophically curious of his peers with the possible exception of Simon - made a point of seeking out Sympatico - if only to find an audience for one of his precocious insights. And Tuesday, February 5th, made room for one of these encounters. "Mr. S. Do you know all these people..."  - "Well - I know most of them. They were all here not so long ago..."  They both glanced at the faces from the basketball team of 1989 - which for some reason made up a dilapidated-looking black and white photograph from a bygone era - the year when the cold war had officially ended. Sympatico was already beginning to feel sucked back into that time of maximum nostalgia and pain,  reliving the slights and scars that had become such an overlay upon his psyche, like a musty security blanket with an odor of familiarity. "It's weird to look at these faces - frozen-like in the snapshot - and then to think how old those people must be now..."  - "Ah - a man after my own heart. At last I meet up with someone equally transfixed by time. I thought I was the only one."  -"No. It bothers me in fact."  -"Indeed. Indeed. I know exactly what you mean. Time unfortunately always wins. But there's drama in that - I suppose."

In saying this he was seized by a peculiar pang of anguish welling up as it always did from the same considerations, evoked so frequently in strolls down corridors of buildings such as this. I wish I could relay something to this one about my own struggles - he seems a tormented soul like me...but I don't even trust that he'd understand THE ISSUE at hand, what had always been at issue, and at the root of every little defeat, the cause of the loitering despair - that knowledge of the impossibility - the sheer impossibility of ever being a truly decent person within the minefield of the social world as presently constituted, the impossibility of ever being "good and true" on your own terms, without feeling like a prisoner under surveillance or a servant indentured to the whims of necessity, to the caprice of the anonymous crowd. Unless it was of course a matter of privation - the absence of a skill that came naturally to others. Nevertheless, simply the knowledge of THAT - the sheer debilitating knowledge - that I cannot be good, the way God must be good, the way they say that Jesus was good or the Buddha was good. How hard it is to show that purity of character without putting on an act for oneself, without becoming an out-and-out fraud, without retreating into mere cowardice or playing it safe and avoiding difficulties. How absolutely futile to preserve one's integrity and make through the crucial years without becoming a stooge, a sell-out, a one-dimensional prop, a silly farcical half-wit. You have to learn to play the fool somewhat or else go insane or get angry, have a meltdown or "sell out" entirely. The stupid need of mind to be good! to have integrity and honor, to stand above the fray - is it not just another typical pathetic little example of a little man's pathetic vision of vanity and self-glorification? If one could just let go of the need to be good, would that be the answer - going beyond the civilized straight-jacket of the knowledge of good and evil? But would this young chap understand my dilemma? Oh, who knows, he might...The inner conversation was again interrupted...

-Mr. Sypatico - I need your advice....I know you're not technically a guidance counselor, but you do have that office..." 

- "Yes - part of my demotion." 

- "So I know that you see a lot of people already."  

-"Yes. I'm becoming quite the people person ever since my initial humiliation...Please don't ask me about the incident..."  

-"No sir..."

Oh that dreaded blasted incident - confirmation of a lifetime of minor missteps and blunders causing needless derailments and change of plans, making time move as a haphazard sequence of stops and starts, of zig-zags and backward steps, of circles and semi-circles and redundant u-turns, born of silly emotional breaking-points, ridiculous impulsive reactions and general somatic instabilities.

-"But you've got something philosophical to share with me. I can feel it."

-"Well - it's just that...I've been thinking about what makes so many people so unhappy...and it sort of has to do with the emphasis placed on the individual..." 

- "The primacy of the individual - ah yes, quite a western idea, I'd say..." 

"But that's just it. Everyone builds up these expectations about life and success - and how it all boils down to individual accomplishment and reaching a certain degree of prominence or popularity..." 

-"I like where you seem to be going with this. Please continue..." 

- "But what ends up happening is that on some level - everyone understands that it's not about them in the long run. As individuals, most of us that is, we're going to live and die in some anonymous fashion without gaining the recognition that we crave. And this fact is terrifying and horrendous and completely unacceptable to each person's ego. And even though the community counts for more, in the sense of enduring longer, and the species counts for most of all, it's not like we can just be happy with that. Being a mere contributor to one's tribe or family or community or country or the species itself is not an adequate form of compensation. We're still going to be miserable - just knowing that we as individuals are, for the most part, anonymous in terms of the role we play, and will vanish into oblivion." 

-"So - in the grand scheme of things - it's not about us then - is it?"

-"No - it really isn't, Mr. S. But this is what's so hard to accept. Like I say - it's unacceptable. How do you cope with that, how can people just accept THAT?" 

-"But are you saying there's no place for collective memory - for at least a partial form of immortality. Have no never heard of fame - of monuments and memorials? There's a reason for books and libraries and archives you know!"

-"Yes - but even then - how many people make a point of remembering anyone from earlier centuries. A handful of names that most people latch onto ... and then only on a superficial level. The bulk of humanity lies and dies in oblivion..."

-"Well - let's back up for a second .... I want to ask you a few questions if I may...Now...to what to you attribute this tendency -this unfortunate habit of assuming that the universe  revolves around us as individuals?" 

-"Survival instincts, I suppose. The body conditions us to react a certain way to outside stimuli, to regard the external world as, by turns, friendly or hostile, and to take offense at whatever curve-ball nature  decides to dish out..." 

-"Very good. Very good. So it gets personal when we don't get our way..." 

-"Exactly." 

-"And you seem to be saying that the body forces us to be conscious of certain basic needs and thus to be pleased when these needs are met and miserable otherwise - but that it would be better if we had remained only semi-conscious of our ill-treatment at the hands of nature - because then we would never have invented unhappiness for ourselves?" 

-"Something like that - yeah - I guess that's it." 

-"But if I may - are you not also implying here that it was not on some level beneficial for human beings to have adapted and developed  a more finely-tuned sensory apparatus, to have become creatures famed for taking notice of other entities as individuals. Was this somehow a catastrophe for us?" 

-"Well - we paid a price for it - didn't we? Wouldn't you call that kind of progress tragic to a degree?" 

-"Ah - tragic - because we are cursed with a level of consciousness that forces us to regard entities in and of themselves and their well-being as individuals - and to compare one creature's lot with another's - to project our own feelings and aspirations onto every entity that surrounds us? And is that such a bad thing - such a terrible outcome?" 

-"Well I'm just saying..." 

-"Yes. I see what you're getting at - but one could reverse the question and ask - what sort of happiness would be available to us if human life had ceased from striving from aspiring - if it had merely plateaued at the level of brutish, herd-animal subsistence?"

-"What do you mean by that?" 

-"Well - if we just had remained complacent herd-animals on the order of sheep or cows  - having no ambitions beyond the survival of the group?"

-"... But let's get back to this business of anonymity. That's what's really bothering you. What's it's all for - in the grand scheme - if nothing gets remembered - if the contributions of most people fall by the wayside and never get noticed or validated in any way? Is that a fair summary?"

 -"Yes." 

-"Well - if I may ask - do you have any spiritual or religious insights that might provide some source of consolation?"

- "You mean like "God watching over us and keeping tabs on everyone?" 

-"Yeah - something like that - for sure."It sounds great - but when you consider how miniscule people's lives are - it would be sort of demeaning to God as Ultimate Mystery or Absolute Intelligence - to be some sort of divine stenographer or census-taker - keeping stats on people." 

-"I see what you mean. You have a point there." 

-"It would help if there some kind of celestial butler or numbers-cruncher out there...but just the sound of that seems implausible." 

-"Well - people do believe in angels you know..."