A Tiny Little Ode to Joy

Yesterday was  International Happiness Day NPR informed me (on one of endless drives shuttling Yon from school-to Russian class-to fencing-home).  It got me thinking about two things:

-          the motivation behind the drive to single out days out of our calendar in order to notice something ubiquitous;

-          Happiness?

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are promised by the best, but also the most problematically elliptical line in the Declaration of Independence.  All three – yes, even life - are relational, in the sense that neither is an absolute concept, independent of perspective, context, or - plainly - other people.    Happiness, in particular, forms a knot of tangled human ties, desires, relations. Is it possible to be happy in a void? If no man is an island, can happiness exist divorced from the happiness or lack thereof in others around you, without your perception of your happiness in relation, either positive or negative, to theirs? I’m putting it out there for purely selfish reasons :-)

When a high school teacher asked me what I want to be after the army service (she meant what will I choose to study, but I chose to misunderstand her, as was my want)  I answered that I want to be happy. I am not sure about the results, but I know that whenever I am Unhappy I need to be reminded of what is good in my life (often in relation to the less fortunate in that areas, lets be honest) in order to regain any sense of fulfillment. Does that mean something about my nature (competitive and in need of control) or a more general human trait? Why are we not born with a talent for happiness?

Maybe that’s why the UN in its wisdom found it necessary to address the issue by picking the date of the vernal equinox to recognize happiness. Because, to paraphrase Ben Franklin, we all have to catch up with happiness ourselves, I am suspicious about this paternalistic approach to individual pursuits. What are international bureaucracies for if not for giving us a firmly guiding, yet utterly ineffectual hand?

After all, Stalin loved to celebrate another date in March, its 8^th day, but that did not do diddly squat to curb the rampant misogyny still extant in Russia to this day.Come to think of it the Soviet state coerced its citizens to be happy . The best exhibition project of Stalinist art was even called “агитация за счастье” – Agitating For Happiness. Perhaps this is the reason us post-Soviets have such a funny relationship with the concept!

I am officially a curmudgeon.