Art and
Happiness
May 27, 2008
In the
recently published "Against Happiness," popular writer Eric Wilson disparages
our current love affair with putting on a happy face. With our "feel good"
culture and the widespread use of happy drugs, everybody's trying to be cheerful
and there are no decent dollops of melancholy and sadness, he says. When this
happens, art becomes bland, unchallenging and redundant. Dr. Thomas Svolos of
the department of Psychiatry at Creighton University School of Medicine thinks
Wilson is right.
"When you're melancholy, you tend to step back and examine your life," he says.
"That kind of questioning is essential for
creativity."
What
these guys are talking about is a redefinition of happiness, and I think they're
onto something. Life's not about getting free of pain, but rather finding
happiness through service to some process with links to a higher ideal. A state
of thoughtful melancholy and sensitivity breeds an elevated creativity and a
more profound happiness. Here are a few of my own
keys:
Work
alone and be your own motivator.
Take time for private wandering and nature's
gifts.
Dig around and explore purposefully.
Serve others as well as your
own passions.
Look for potential in all things and all beings.
Face
life's deeper meanings squarely and truthfully.
Move through thoughtful
understanding to pervasive action.
Know you are partner in a great
brotherhood and sisterhood.
Accept sadness as part of the human condition.
Know that in the big picture you are not important, but what you make and do
is.
Currently, 11
percent of American women and 5 percent of American men take antidepressants,
the magazine Scientific American reported in February. A high percentage are
prescribed ad hoc by family doctors, without benefit of thorough analysis. Does
anyone prescribe a host of golden daffodils, a mountain stream, or a robin's
nest on which to contemplate? Perhaps it's too "do it yourself" and non-profit
to be considered. But it seems to me that's where happiness lies and dreams are
made. Just try painting that nest. It's a spiritual act, loaded with joy. "The
world," said Robert Louis Stevenson, "is so full of a number of things, I'm sure
we should all be as happy as kings."
-Robert
Genn