Sometimes I think the monomaniacal pursuit of happiness may leave everyone miserable in the final analysis. I have always believed that I would be happy if could save the world and everyone in it. Surely the whole wide world would love me if I were the messiah. Or I would be crucified and go to happiness heaven. So here I am, seeking stem cell therapy to rid myself of pain when a most painful crucifixion might lead to the realization of my dreams!
Happiness on Earth might at least be partially realized with stem cell brain regeneration by ridding one of the terrible memories present in the present and that, together with an extended life, since the brain is the control center of the body, might provide me with sufficient time to save the world although I am not so sure about how happy it might ever be.
Esteemed author Marci Shimoff, in her pop-happiness book, Happy for No Reason, 7 Steps to Being Happy from the Inside Out, revealed that a success expert pursuing the happiness trade with her on a flight to a success conference explained what "pursuit" of happiness really meant back in 1776.
No, "pursuit" did not mean to “chase” after happiness, but simply to engage in happiness, to be actively happy, just as, in pursuing a trade, someone does not chase after making shoes, but just makes shoes for the sake of making shoes.
Now that semantic calisthenic might appear absurd to a shoemaker pursuing a wage or profit in 1776 as well as to shoemakers today. She does advise people pursuing happiness to plan for the happiness objective, and no doubt that would include buying her books and seminars, yet she tells them not to chase after happiness, to just have it inside.
I myself have no objection to logical absurdities and fallacies as long as the objective is obtained, say, cash-in-hand happiness, or even flat-broke happiness if money doesn't count. In fact, after reconsidering her thoughts in my shower this morning, I sympathized with the irrational notion that brought her fame and fortune.
I think to escape from reality, and, after following that tendency by reading and writing books, I admit that I find my own “happiness" by losing my unhappiness in compulsive writing, of being, what one critic said, “a writing machine,” and an amateur writer at that. because I think truth is more valuable than money, a notion I am on the verge of abandoning because I want to get out of the ghetto before I die in it.
When I write for nothing, I fancy that I am not a mere writer but an author; that is, a god or creator unto myself, whose immortal works should be placed upon the eternal shelf alongside the volumes of other distinguished authors. I vainly confess that I am happy with my obsession, the avoidance of painful reality. I do have very few mental orgasms every week upon the discovery of some truth, which, I usually discover, has already been told, yet not in the way I have told it, wherefore I rejoice, happily, as it were.
Be that as it may, is not thinking motivated by the fear and avoidance of the painful aspects of reality, especially The End? And is not that flight into metaphysical realms an escape from oneself as a mortal animal? An omnipotent God have to think, but we must think to survive.
Anyhow, who cares whether the objective is inside or outside as long as desire is satisfied or one feels pleased? The ideal end is not merely in getting something in particular, but the feeling of being happy. As Sharon Falconer said to Elmer Gantry, her evangelistic con man, "Please lie to me."
It is no wonder that, when drawing the declaration of independence, Thomas Jefferson substituted the right to the pursuit of happiness for Locke's right to property. To each his own as long as it coincides with the happiness of the greatest number is the general rule for happiness, which is not a definite substance. Perhaps Marci's book on happiness did, as she brags, create miracles for 20,000 readers, but, unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for the continued progress of the human race, that book has not saved the world from unhappiness, as evident on the expression on the average person’s face when we walk down Main Street.
Sad to say that happiness does not come in a can or a bottle. It is not a "substance" unless you are a metaphysician. Observe what the great Sir William Blackstone had to say about happiness when discussing the Nature of Laws in General back in 1753, shortly before the American rebels pursued it.
“But if the discovery of these first principles of the law of nature depended only upon the due exertion of right reason, and could not otherwise be attained than by a chain of metaphysical disquisitions, mankind would have wanted some inducement to have quickened their inquiries, and the greater part of the world would have rested content in mental indolence, and ignorance it's [sic] inseparable companion. As therefore the creator is a being, not only of infinite power, and wisdom, but also of infinite goodness, he has been pleased so to contrive the constitution and frame of humanity, that we should want no other prompter to enquire after and pursue the rule of right, but only our own self-love, that universal principle of action. For he has so intimately connected, so inseparably interwoven the laws of eternal justice with the happiness of each individual, that the latter cannot be attained but by observing the former; and, if the former be punctually obeyed, it cannot but induce the latter. In consequence of which mutual connection of justice and human felicity, he has not perplexed the law of nature with a multitude, of abstracted rules and precepts, referring merely to the fitness or unfitness of things, as some have vainly surmised; but has graciously reduced the rule of obedience to this one paternal precept, “that man should pursue his own happiness.” This is the foundation of what we call ethics, or natural law. For the several articles into which it is branched in our systems, amount to no more than demonstrating, that this or that action tends to man's real happiness, and therefore very justly concluding that the performance of it is a part of the law of nature; or, on the other hand, that this or that action is destructive of man's real happiness, and therefore that the law of nature forbids it.”
In fine, in our perfect democracy, you may do whatever makes you happy, so called by you, while doing no harm to others. There are no particular rules. Yet an ethic of happiness does not allow happiness in harming others. Hence the freedom of making yourself happy is limited. And there is the rub.
Since everyone can have their own idea of happiness, it seems that, although happiness is a good, it is not a substance or thing, it is a pleasing feeling-thought.
I testify that I have been relatively happy avoiding reality by reading books of great authors or their biographies: If I like their work, I could care less about their personal lives; if I do not care for their writing, I may like the biographies, some of which are far more entertaining than their works.
One great writer I like to read about is Stendhal, who lived 1783 to 1842. He was a rather romantic realistic author enthused by the enlightenment, a veteran of Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia, an egotistical liberal, dandy and wit, and a womanizer to boot, one who unfortunately contracted syphilis at age 25 and suffered miserably from medical mistreatment until he died at 59.
By coincidence or something really weird like god, I encountered on the book sale shelf at my local library a copy of Matthew Josephson's Stendhal or the Pursuit of Happiness, copyrighted the very year of my birth, 1946, and contributed to the Nashville Public Library by Mr. and Mrs. Monroe Carell, Jr., philanthropists known especially for parking lots and their founding of the Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt. A previous owner had penciled under the stamped word, DISCARDED, "Thanks, but what a shame!!" Indeed!
This wonderful biography relates that Stendhal loved studying and writing about art in Italy during the day and loving Italian women every evening; wherefore his favorite thesis was that happiness is attainable in Italy, where the animal or natural instincts can be satisfied, whereas, on the other hand, the northern European man is dominated by greed, vanity, and fear of public opinion.
Furthermore, he found books to be a "storehouse of happiness, always safe, and which man's ill will can never steal from us." And the art he beheld in Italy "brought a balm for the cruelest disappointments."
He observed that, "one may find happiness in one’s stomach, and love, or in the head, with a little good sense; one may take something from each of these three kinds of happiness and make oneself a pleasant lot that is immune to the cruelties of men."
In the main, Stendhal believed that men's motives of behavior were determined by self-interest and by the experience of pleasure and pain. Their prime object was "the pursuit of happiness." Although happiness was to be found socially in the greatest good of the greatest number, the individual found it in his natural passions, which must, of course, be controlled for him to be civilized.
The pursuit of happiness, whatever that means to each one of us, is constitutional, part of our nature if only we would realize it. We should be happy to have the "pursuit of happiness" embodied in our Declaration of Independence as a reminder.
It has become obvious to me with my rather advanced age that I need much more time to pursue happiness. It is my information and believe that not only will stem cell therapy provide me with pain relief but may even extend my life to 150 years thus providing me with considerable more time to be happy.