Dear PiePie,
I saw an interview that IU (Korean singer) did with her brother where they talked about happiness.
In it, her brother asked (12:10 onwards), “I think my sister is a very strong person, but…there could be things you can’t talk easily with other people, even if you’re close to them, and there could be parts that you endure and bear on your own. All the while, you’ve been working very hard. You do this and that without a break … Watching you be like this, I wonder, ‘Is she really happy living like that? Are you happy now?’”
IU’s response, after a pause, was “I’m happy when there’s nothing going on, that’s what I think now. I don’t think happiness has to be ‘Wow I’m so happy’ (with a smiley face). That could be a kind of happiness but I think there is an expressionless happiness. I think there’s nothing that makes me sad or angry; I think that’s a state of happiness.”
It rings true, and it got me thinking about happiness. It seems unlikely that anyone will be regularly experiencing moments of euphoric joy or exhilarating elation – the type that puts a grin on your face. But you can still be happy in a ‘serene, peaceful bliss’ sort of way. For me, the people I love (you!) are healthy, work can be a chore but it is manageable, and you are growing up well. I go to bed late, but without anxiety or worry. I have time to listen to music I like and watch dramas I enjoy. It is not a terribly exciting life, but in a tired, expressionless way, I am incredibly happy.
I do wonder if I’m lowering the bar for “happiness”. If perhaps I should strive for a higher emotional peak. If perhaps I have been ‘modulating’ my emotional mountains and valleys such that I never get too high nor too low. Watching you, it seems that kids are more easily delighted (and upset) and silly things can make you laugh oh so hard. And yet, to a ‘grown-up’, silly things just seem…silly.
Somewhere, it seems we lost the unadulterated happiness that comes with experiencing moments of wonder.
This is neither good or bad though. Definitely, the feelings of childlike wonder are further and fewer between; less of the world surprise and amaze you. The same things that used to make you ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ no longer achieve the same effects. But in place of such wonder, is a deeper appreciation of things that I didn’t quite think about when I was younger. Health. Family. Friends. Absence of events that make you sad or angry.
And so, here’s my current hypothesis on happiness.
Perhaps, as we experience more and more of life, the definition of happiness shifts. Earlier in life, our ‘world’ is rapidly expanding and we experience different and new things constantly – the first time we touch a rabbit, the first time we eat chips, the first time we feel the rush of the wind outside the car window. Some things bring us to greater emotional heights – they redefine the 10/10 of our experience – while other things just slot within the 7/10 of our current universe of experience.
At some point, however, the ‘world’ no longer expands quite as rapidly, and with it, the redefining of the 10/10 happens less and less frequently. But because new 10/10 moments happen less frequently, we become more confident of our current universe of experience. We are better able to assess what we have and be assured that an 8/10 is really an 8/10. Sure, some of what’s in the unknown ‘world’ that we’ve never experience could be awesome – redefining the metaphorical 10/10 – but that wouldn’t make our 8/10 drop much.
Childlike wonders of the new are thus replaced with deeper appreciation and gratitude of the old. And that may be how expressionless happiness come to be, when we’ve moved so far over the spectrum that humdrum contentment becomes genuinely satisfying.
Who knows? Perhaps my running hypothesis on happiness will evolve. But at this moment, I’m happy, in an expressionless way. 😊
Love, Dad