There clearly seems to be a happiness deficit in the world, right now, don’t you think? So, why did I label this thread Happy Friday? What persuaded me to do such a crazy thing?
It was of course all very innocent. No, that’s the wrong word. Naive is perhaps better. The motivation was simply that, at the end of the working week, it seemed to me, it would be nice to put a smile on people’s faces. Something witty, perhaps, or even a joke.
It never occurred to me at the time that even the phrase ‘The end of the working week’ betrays my age and ignorance. Those words would have made perfect sense twenty or more years ago. But today? Nah! For many there isn’t an end to the working week. Even if, in this WFH age, you’re only required to go to the office two days a week, you’re always on call, seven days a week, twenty four hours a day.
There’s a lot of hoo-hah about ‘work-life balance’ but, for as long as you have a device in your hand, or your pocket or purse, or in the bathroom, or on the bedside table, you’re on call. And if you turn the bloody thing off and go off-grid you may miss that important email from HR about the new Discrimination, Exclusion, Indoctrination rules.
I mean, what are you to think of an employer who demands that, in addition to your being on 24/7 call, you actually, physically slog into the goddam office a couple of days every week? No wonder employees don’t trust their employers any more.
And what about happiness, anyway? Is it a worthy pursuit? Is it all it’s cracked up to be?
Well, in 1776, the founding fathers of the United States famously declared …
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.1 (Emphasis added)
Much more recently the Dalai Lama has been quoted as saying …
I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. That is clear. Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we all are seeking something better in life. So, I think, the very motion of our life is towards happiness.2 (Emphasis added)
Mind you, the late Christopher Hitchens eviscerated the Dalai Lama’s comment:
The very best that can be said is that he uttered a string of fatuous non sequiturs. There is not even a strand of chewing gum to connect the premise to the conclusion; the speaker simply assumes what he has to prove.3
Personally, I very much like the thinking of the late Roger Scruton:
Pleasure comes with the fulfilment of desire - getting what you want and wanting what you get. Happiness comes with the fulfilment of the person. And much of our moral confusion comes from the fact that we no longer know what happiness is, nor how to obtain it.4
… and the wisdom of Christopher Lasch who proposed that the central paradox of religious faith is…
the secret of happiness lies in renouncing the right to be happy.
But the final word must go to Ambrose Bierce. In his Devil’s Dictionary (1911) he defines …
Happiness, n. An agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.
Thanks for reading.
The image at the top is from Shutterstock.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America (July 4, 1776)
His Holiness the Dalai Lama & Howard C. Cutler, M.D. The Art of Happiness: a Handbook for Living (1988)
Christopher Hitchens. Letters to a Young Contrarian (2001)
Roger Scruton. The Good Life (1998)