Maybe it’s the curse of spending my workdays in a newsroom: the world beyond my own environs starts to look like crap.
Between the papers, the wires, the TV, Twitter, Facebook, email, newsgroups, blogs and the web at large, my average day is all news, and much of it is bad.
In fact, the volume of information I ingest probably makes me a suitable subject for a major social experiment, and maybe a medical one too. What will all this info do to me? Will my brain rot, explode or burn out? Will those of us who have inhaled this stuff day in, day out for decades become whimpering basket cases or prematurely senile?
That’s a question that haunts me sometimes, but I won’t know the answer for years.
In the here-and-now, the deeper issue is about the messages that information conveys.
What bothers me most on a daily basis is that evidence of the world getting worse is overwhelming. It looks like war, famine, pestilence and death are marching roughshod over wide swaths of the planet. I know, I’m exposed to the brunt of the ongoing news storm, so my view is skewed; still, it’s clear that we’re dealing with more than just information apocalypse. Aren’t we?
“Look on the bright side,” is the obvious counterpoint. And I do. I have a nice home, a healthy happy family, and a charming lifestyle in the most fortunate country on Earth. In fact, I’m about as happy as can be.
But there’s the rub. So much is wrong in the world all around! To be happy while so many are so desperate offers a strange paradox: on the one hand, if I can’t be happy with all my good fortune, who can? On the other hand, it suggests if I suffered just a bit more, I might be able to do something to alleviate the suffering of others.
My home is small, but it’s big enough for a few people to live in. My possessions may not be to everyone’s taste, but if sold, might provide enough for some more desperate souls to live on. My income supports me, my child and my mortgage, but I could probably do without a few things to sponsor foster kids or acres of rain-forest or homeless people or whales. Maybe I should give up the job entirely to do charity work.
And yet selfishly, I don’t want to compromise my happiness; I want to refine it, ensure its stability, encourage its growth. I feel like a happy me might be able to make the world a better place. I just have to work to ensure that doesn’t become justification for self-indulgence.
Then again, even a relatively abstemious lifestyle looks indulgent compared to what most of the world enjoys.
What an odd thing: the burden of happiness. It’s a nice problem to have, of course. Pretty light, as burdens go. But I feel the weight of it anyway.
I think I’d prefer to feel it. I’m hoping it may keep me honest.
I think any measure of happiness, as long as it comes from the right place and is actually happiness (not the satisfaction of the addict taking a hit, or any substitution for happiness), I think you make the world a better place. Studies have shown that people who hang out with sad, angry or depressed people”catch” their emotional states, and that the same is true of those who hang out with happy people.
I’d say more that once you’ve got some happiness, the challenge is to hang onto it, spread it to some of your less-happy friends, and make it grow. I think the real trick of the saints and holy people of the world is to hold on to their happiness while increasing the happiness of others; I don’t know how you do it, but I’m so happy these days, I want to help people who were in the same kind of trouble I was. I just don’t know how to start.
Or how to talk about it without sounding like a flake. It’s a fine line.
Ugh, sleep brain makes English not work. Hulk smash grammar, etc.
I couldn’t agree more, Candace, and I don’t think you sound like a flake whatsoever. It is a sad state of affairs that speaking about unadulterated happiness can be met with skepticism, isn’t it?
David, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. The challenge is to not wallow in our own bliss to the point where we forget about helping others out of their misery, but it is our absolute DUTY to take our positive energy and transfer it to others.