The opposite of all. . . .

Is having nothing the opposite of having it all?
Is having enough the opposite of having it all?
Is sharing the opposite of having it all?

What is all?

'Maybe young women don’t wonder whether they can have it all any longer, but in case any of you are wondering, of course you can have it all. What are you going to do? Everything, is my guess. It will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications. It will not be anything like what you think it will be like, but surprises are good for you. And don’t be frightened: You can always change your mind. I know: I’ve had four careers and three husbands. . . .

"Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women. Thank you. Good luck. The first act of your life is over. Welcome to the best years of your lives."  

Nora Ephron @ 1996 Wellesley College Graduation

Is "having it all" the second-wave, feminist version of the American Dream?  The longing for "having it all" and the possibility or non-possibility has been bouncing around cyberspace a lot in recent weeks because of Anne-Marie Slaughter’s Atlantic Cover Story “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All”.  I've been reading some of the discussion.  Frankly, it makes me uncomfortable. It reminds me of the old goal of getting a bigger part of the pie.  One reason, an ethical one, this makes me uncomfortable might be that the difficulty having it all (or even a bigger piece) seems to be one of the first world problems that pale in comparison to the desire to have some food, a place to sleep, and a modicum of safety.  Another reason. a theological one, is that I think human beings are limited creatures and that living with certain kinds of limits may be a form of righteousness; this is not to deny that there are limits that are unjust and should be addressed, even shattered.  

Without trivializing, I mention that death is one of the limits we all face.  Human life does not last forever.  This week Nora Ephron confronted that limit and as people, especially women, have responded to her death many of them have referred to the commencement speech she gave in 1996 at her alma mater.  The quotations above are from that talk.  Read the whole thing!  Like Ursula K. Le Guin's "Left-Handed Commencement Address" delivered at Mills College in 1983, this speech goes beyond the trite to the heart of important life issues.  (LaGuin goes further to question the notion that success is to be pursued.)

I find two points in Ephron's assertion that women in the class of 1996 might be able to have it all useful and true, despite my fundamental skepticism about that claim.  First, she admits that this will be messy and complicated then advises embracing the mess and the complications.  She does not expect this to be easy or assume that making it easy is someone else's job.  Second, at the end of her remarks, she urges her listeners to make making a difference for other women part of what is included in their "all."  Thus, she appears to be in sympathy with those Americans who assert that the American Dream is bigger than having everything for one's self and that it includes contributing to the public good.

And that reminds me of another remarkable American woman from an earlier phase of woman's rights, Frances Willard.  As the president of the WCTU her motto emphasized action more than possession:  Do Everything!  (Wish I could find the photograph of her at her roll top desk, piled high with all the paper involved in doing everything.)  Notice that Ephron mixes doing and having and a careful reading of Slaughter might also distinguish between the two.  

Generational happiness

My Am Con students wrestled mightily with the reality of Americans' seemingly unending dis-satisfaction.  We noticed it in Quicksand and in Ragtime both set more or less in the early 20th century.  (Enich coined a fine term for it; if he reads this, perhaps he'll add it in the comments.) By the end of the fourth semester they were also working on coming to terms with gap between national ideals and aspirations and the realities of national life.  Angels in America gave some of them a handle on this problem.  Hannah's admonition that one must have an "idea" about America combined with Belize's declaration that he did not have to love America gave them a way to recognize that the gap is not always reducible to collective (or even individual) hypocrisy.  There is also something of a "work in progress" quality to the nation, its culture, and its people.

Perhaps these realizations come at a particular developmental stage, to each generation in its own time and in its own way.  Poet Carl Dennis hints at something like that in his poem, "Our Generation," which I take to be about the generation labeled the "boomers."  Here he manages to shine a gentle light both on the pursuit of individual happiness and on the few who notice the gap between the county in theory and the country in fact.  He does it gently and with quiet hope.

Our Generation

Whatever they'll say about our delinquencies,

They'll have to agree we managed to bridge the gap

Between those who arrived before us

And those who followed. We learned enough

At the schools available to fill the entry-level positions

At the extant sawmills our elders managed,

At banks, drug stores, freight yards, and hospitals,

Then worked our way up to positions of trust.

There we were, down on the shop floor

Or up in the manager's office, or outside the office

On scaffolds, washing the windows.

Did we work with joy? With no less joy

Than people felt in the generations before us.

And on weekends and weekday evenings

We did our best to pursue the happiness

Our founders encouraged us to pursue,

And with equal gusto. Whatever they say about us

They can't deny that we filled the concert halls,

Movie houses, malls, and late-night restaurants.

We took our bows on stage or waited on tables

Or manned the refreshment booths to earn a little extra

For the things we wanted, the very things

Pursued by the generations before us

And likely to be pursued by generations to come:

Children and lawns and cars and beach towels.

And now and then we stood back to admire

The colorful spectacle, the endless variety,

As others before us admired it, and then returned

To fill our picnic baskets, drive to the park,

And use the baseball diamonds just as their contrivers

Intended they should be used. And if we too

Crowded into the squares to cheer the officials

Who proclaimed our country as fine in fact

As it is in theory, as faithful a friend to the planet

As any country we cared to name,

A few of us confined to a side street,

Carried signs declaring a truth less fanciful.

A few unheeded, to be sure, but no more unheeded

Than a similar few in generations before us

Who hoped that the truth in generations to come,

Though just as homely, would find more followers.

Carl Dennis
The Kenyon Review
New Series, Volume XXVII Number 2
Spring 2005

Ten things that will make you happy

So it is self-help-y.  So what.  That is a venerable American genre.  We recognize it in Ben Franklin and it endures til today.  And if the pursuit of happiness is a right claimed in the Declaration of Independence, then what better goal for a self-help guide/poster than moving toward happiness.  Moreover, these are ten things that SCIENCE tell us will make us happy.

Notice especially #10 which points us toward the notion that happiness is built upon public virtue rather than achieved by self-indulgence.

#10: Give It Away, Give It Away Now! Make altruism and giving part of your life, and be purposeful about it. Researcher Stephen Post says helping a neighbor, volunteering, or donating goods and services results in a “helper’s high,” and you get more health benefits than you would from exercise or quitting smoking. Listening to a friend, passing on your skills, celebrating others’ successes, and forgiveness also contribute to happiness, he says. Researcher Elizabeth Dunn found that those who spend money on others reported much greater happiness than those who spend it on themselves.

HERE for a more easily read version.

NPR TED talks on Happiness: choice and action

THREE TALKS about happiness:

Barry Schwartz: Does Having Options Make Us Happier?   
Only some of the time, but raising expectations can also contribute to dissatisfaction and having too many options may be paralyzing.   But, my students assert that this is NOT true for them.  At least most of them did and one agreed that when the analysis is applied to buying jeans (the example Schwartz gave from his own experience), she experiences something like paralysis and would prefer not to undertake the task.  Another confessed to something similar when selecting a movie on Netflix.  Others suggested that Schwartz may be accurate for people of his generation, but not for theirs.  They have always had so many choices, so they are not paralyzed or rendered dissatisfied.  In the midst of the exchange, I wondered if the parallel between jeans, or shampoo, or coffees and big ideals is valid.  That is to suggest that dissatisfaction with consumer goods may be debilitating, but dissatisfaction with with the nation's current reality relative to is highest ideals can (indeed should) motivate action.  

Kathyrn Schulz: Why Should We Embrace Regret?  Schulz uses the example of the tattoo she got when she was 29 to explore the value of regret which is not precisely the opposite of happiness.  Rather she suggests that regret can be a reminder that we can do better.  Her remarks are of interest in conversation with our discussion in class about ways to understand Americans' failure to bring our best ideals to reality.  The assertion that honest recognition of that failure can be the basis of renewed effort resonates with her suggestions about the value of regret for individuals.

 

Malcolm Gladwell: What Does Spaghetti Sauce Have To Do With Happiness?   The shift from expectation of universals to recognition of varying preferences for such things as the viscosity of tomato sauce and the taste of mustard and the roast of coffee.  Has this given us more pleasure?  Can insights drawn from research on food preferences be used to promote conflict resolution?

 

"joys of the soul"

"When I think about what really makes me happy, what I really crave, I come up with a very different list: concentrated, purposeful work, especially creative work; being with people I love; feeling like I’m part of something larger. Meaning, connectedness, doing strenuously what you do well: not sights, not thrills, and not even pleasures, as welcome as they are. Not passivity, not letting the world come in and tickle you, but creativity, curiosity, altruism, engagement, craft. Raising children, or teaching students, or hanging out with friends. Playing music, not listening to it. Making things, or making them happen. Thinking hard and feeling deeply."  This by William Deresiewiez blogging in The American Scholar LINK

In three paragraphs (the second quoted above) Deresiewicz considers what makes life worth living.  His comments are prompted in part by reading another author (Steven Weinberg, in the New York Review of Books) reflecting upon "the consolations of life in the absence of belief in the hereafter."  Deresiewicz argues in favor of the "joys of the soul" rather than of the "pleasures of the body" as a richer set of consolations.  His rejection of a consumerist notion of the self would makes him a valuable contributor to conversation with our current reading about advertizing in the 1960s.

And the exchange of comments that follow his brief posting make lively reading that points us toward large issues such as the power of status, the value of social connections, and the difference religious belief makes.  I recommend those as well.

unhappy, post-1960s world?

 

"For many, the world with which 'the sixties' left us is a distinctly unhappy one."

 Thomas Frank on the opening page of The Conquest of Cool

This seems to suggest that we are living in an unhappy world and that the reasons for our unhappiness are to found in the 1960s.  Two assumptions, or assertions, I'm not ready to take as true on the face of it.  Both will be subjects of our conversations for several class periods.

Noticing happiness in poems

It is national poetry month so yesterday a group of faculty read poetry to each other: some poems written by the reader and some not.  These were not poems about happiness.  Indeed some had topics quite the opposite: sorrow, guilt, or mourning.  Nonetheless, the act of gathering to read and then reading did generate a sort of joy in the shared appreciation for the beauty of the words.

"My apologies to happiness for taking you as my due."

This line from "Under One Star" by Wislawa Szymborska was perhaps the only direct reference to happiness and it is in passing.  I'm noticing this.  Happiness often appears in poems in passing.  It is noticed rather than examined.  This morning I read another poem (Another Insane Devotion by Gerald Stern) in which happiness appear as a single word sentence drawing upon the three details that precede it.

"[...]I think I gave the cat

half of my sandwich to buy my life, I think

I broke it in half as a decent sacrifice.

It was this I bought, the red coleus,

the split rocking chair, the silk lampshade.

Happiness. I watched him with pleasure.

I bought memory. I could have lost it."

Without dismissing the value of careful analysis and reflection, I'm inclined to agree with these poets and their example of noticing happiness.

(not) writing about happiness

"In truth, books about joy are hard to find because happiness is nearly impossible to write about. Narrative thrives on conflict." 

Lauen Goff on NPR's You Must Read This Book about Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim LINK

There is poetry about happiness, however.  For example, this collection titled Happiness by Deborah Keenan.  I wonder if this is because poetry can focus our attention on a moment and happiness is experienced in moments?

HAPPY Good Friday???????

Everywhere I went yesterday, even church, I was offered this blessing.

Is it a profound theological point?  There is that notion that the fall of humanity into sin is the cause of greater good.  Maybe that makes Good Friday a day to be be happy. 

And we do call it GOOD Friday, so perhaps happy is an appropriate response to the day's event.  Theologians do speak of the happy exchange in which Jesus assumes human sin and humans receive his righteousness.

And it was a gorgeous day, warmish and clear.  I did have lunch with my dear friend.  I WAS happy.

Even the bulletin at the Good Friday service instructed me that the appropriate attitude is not mournful since Christians know that Jesus death on the cross is not the end of the story, but a new beginning transforming death into life.

Nonetheless, I've never been greeted "Happy funeral," so I stand by my uncomfortable reaction and continue to search for a more appropriate greeting.

practicing freedom

We should care that as the public sphere becomes increasingly chaotic and threatening, what we think of as freedom consists of insularity and retreat.  Marketers welcome this development, but a consumerist mentality allows us to turn spiritual practices, which traditionally have been aimed at making us more responsive to the legitimate needs of the world, into self-indulgence. 

Kathleen Norris

Poet and essayist Kathleen Norris raises the startling possibility that 21st century Americans are less attentive to the "legitimate needs of the world" then were the desert hermits of 4th century Egypt.  Most often our immediate response to those ancient men and women is to disdain their withdrawal from the real world and to dismiss their spirituality as selfish.  Norris, who has dwelt with them, has a different response, a more admiring one that allows her to learn from their sayings and their example of wrestling with demons and their desire to see the world honestly.

But, that is a longer and subtle discussion.  In these two sentences Norris turns her attention to her own world and ours.  She notices that self-help is more likely to promise fulfilling "what I want" than to counsel self-examination.  There are exceptions, there are always exceptions.  If her critique is extreme, it is still true.  Freedom can, often does, devolve into self-indulgence marked by insistence upon being given many options and uninhibited power to chose between them.

The easiest example are consumer decisions.  Many, many types of phones and several service providers to decide among, but no option to not have a phone, to be fully engaged with the person in the room with me rather than always eager for the next distraction.  This example is not simple.   To regard the ubiquity of cell phones as self-indulgent and isolating requires some thought beyond the emotional appeal of the ads suggesting that virtual presence is as good as real presence.  It requires assessing the long effects of the tool on life and relationships, not only the convenience.

If the easiest examples need careful unfolding, the more complex examples, decisions about private relationships and public life, are more insidious still.  A long look would bring us back to our earlier discussions of happiness as an individual concern and happiness as a result of cultivating public virtue.  This may go beyond Ben Franklin's famous system for keeping track of his own moral progress, which was not so different from individuals counting calories or logging miles run.  The practices of freedom are not limited to voting and external actions.  They also involve facing difficult realities about our selves and seeing the world honestly so that we can attend to its legitimate needs, not only indulge our own own desires.

To Happiness, Carl Dennis

I made no attempt to resist this poem on our topic by one of my favorite poets.  He personifies happiness and thus suggests that happiness is a friend.  The narrative of a friend's arrival after a long absence brings a vicarious sense of happiness to me.  Perhaps even stronger, it wakens memory of similar visits and desire for their repetition.

To Happiness

by Carl Dennis

If you're not approaching, I hope at least
You're off to comfort someone who needs you more,
Not lost wandering aimlessly
Or drawn to the shelter of well-lit rooms
Where people assume you've arrived already.

If you're coming this way, send me the details—
The name of the ship, the port it leaves from—
So I can be down on the dock to help you
Unload your valises, your trunks and boxes
And stow them in the big van I'll have rented.

I'd like this to be no weekend stay
Where a single change of clothes is sufficient.
Bring clothes for all seasons, enough to fill a closet;
And instead of a single book for the bedside table
Bring boxes of all your favorites.

I'll be eager to clear half my shelves to make room,
Eager to read any titles you recommend.
If we've many in common, feel free to suggest
They prove my disposition isn't to blame
For your long absence, just some problems of attitude,

A few bad habits you'll help me set to one side.
We can start at dinner, which you're welcome
To cook for us while I sweep and straighten
And set the table. Then light the candles
You've brought from afar for the occasion.

Light them and fill the room I supposed I knew
With a glow that shows me I was mistaken.
Then help me decide if I'm still the person I was
Or someone else, someone who always believed in you
And imagined no good reasons for your delay.

"To Happiness" by Carl Dennis, from Unknown Friends. © Penguin, 2007. Reprinted with permission. 

unique contribution to democracy: discuss . . .

There is a form of pseudo exam question that states something then commands: "Discuss."  This bit from Ansel Adams' essay "The Meaning of the National Parks" seems a good candidate for that treatment.

"James Bryce once said that the concept of the National Parks was America's unique contribution to the democratic idea."  Discuss.

notes toward the discussion

• What is the concept of the National Parks?  
• Is it actualized in the parks we have?
• What does it contribute to the democratic idea?
• Why idea and not to the practice of democracy?
• Is this really unique?  Does any other nation have something similar?  If so, is their derivative?
• Is this a restatement of the 19th century nationalist position that offered up our landscape in competition with European cultural artifacts?

What sort of thing is happiness?

In response to Donna McMillian's very instructive presentation to us on the topic of positive psychology or subjective well-being.  I was particularly struck by the persistence of this issue: we're not entirely sure what happiness is (though it might be a mood or some combination of emotion and cognition), nonetheless there seem to be measurable markers of its presence in our bodies and behaviors that are not only characteristic of those who are happy but also productive of that mood, emotion, or state of being.  Given these observations I begin to wonder if happiness isn't more an attitude or perspective than it is the result (or side-effect) of something else.  Is it the case that we are not so much made happy by what we have or by what we are doing as that we experience those possessions or activities from a happy perspective?  Of course some circumstances may promote or inhibit such a perspective, but can they really produce it?

No one happy in that play: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Last night we saw the Guthrie Theater's production of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  It is an admirable production with a fine set, period costumes, excellent acting.  Having come from class discussion of notions of happiness I watched wondering what I might learn about happiness from Williams' portrayal of the evening of "Big Daddy's" 65th birthday, a story of a family in the American south in the 1950s. 

The most obvious thing I noticed: no one was happy in this play.  That is not to say that some characters did not attempt to appear to be happy: Big Mama and Mae might fit this role.  Everyone else in the family displayed their misery nearly without wavering.  Maybe Maggie played a bit at false happiness, but like her sister-in-law, she did it in anticipation of winning the inheritance that promised prosperity.  However, a simple equation of happiness with prosperity is undercut by the obvious fact that the man from whom they hope to win an inheritance, their father-in-law, may be the owner of the property with adequate resources for a European vacation, but he is not happy.  Neither has he been happy in the past.

He is the one who names the odor that prevents happiness: mendacity.  That is: lies, pretense, hypocrisy,  pretending to be what one is not.  Ah, the viewer thinks, here is a new insight.  Happiness depends upon honesty and truth.  That might be the case except that Brink's devotion to "Echo Park" whiskey is in some complex way the result of his either facing the truth about his friendship with Skipper or refusing to face it.  Then Big Mama's illusion that she has been happy in the past is shattered by Big Daddy speaking the truth to her perkiness.  Perhaps Big Daddy's rejection of mendacity it is merely another way of suggesting that the key to being happy is to accept one's circumstances and be content with the blessings of the day.   He has a round of this when, believing the lies he has been told, he thinks that he is not dying and prepares to embrace the pleasures of the day.  But that doesn't quite work either, since this seems less like contentment than frantic pursuit of unrestrained pleasure.  And then the charge of mendacity is repeated with reference to his being told lies about how sick he is.  Certainly Williams was not suggesting that the key to happiness is being willing to die?

I suppose that Williams did not sit down to write a play about happiness in the mid-20th century American south or even about the unhappiness of this family.  Nonetheless, questions about happiness and its absence or its opposite help me hear something more than screaming.