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The Anatomy of Melancholy's Opposite
By David Klinghoffer
It's tempting, at first, to snicker at Dennis Prager's "Happiness
Is a Serious Problem" (ReganBooks/HarperCollins, 179 pages,
$23), in which the conservative radio host tells us how we can
all make ourselves happy. Parts of it call to mind the Monty Python
skit where a chirpy television host explains, among other things,
how to play the flute: Well you just blow in one end, move your
fingers up and down the side, and beautiful music comes out the
other end.
One basic point of Mr. Prager's is that to be happy we need to
constantly battle human nature, denying ourselves short term pleasures
in return for long term happiness. This requires self control,
and Mr. Prager's two page excursion on that subject, "How
to Develop Self Control," will provoke a certain skepticism
from anyone who has tried and failed to rein in a bad habit. The
two steps recommended here are, first, "to develop habits
of self control", second, "to never lose sight of your
goal," the ultimate end you are trying to attain by controlling
yourself.
Uh huh, sure. In the light of day you can positively spill over
with high minded intentions not to smoke that cigarette, drink
that whisky or pursue that White House intern, but when day fades
into night, especially late night, many people find their high
minded intentions dissolving with a speed and thoroughness that
amazes them. It's as if there were some ingredient in sunlight
that temporarily bolsters strength of character, in the absence
of which a character of reinforced steel turns to over baked sweet
potato.
OK, so Mr. Prager may in certain places oversimplify matters, but
elsewhere he has an astonishing ability to state simple truths
we hadn't heard articulated before, at least not so clearly, in
a way that makes their truthfulness immediately and powerfully
obvious. Readers of this book will find themselves writing in the
margin: "right," "exactly," "how true."
Happiness is worth taking seriously, Mr. Prager explains, because
whether we're happy or not affects not only us but our friends
and family members. He plausibly sees being happy, or trying to
be, as no less than a moral responsibility.
The main difficulty is that we tend to confuse happiness with pleasure
or fun, the difference being that pleasure is experienced only
during the pleasurable act itself and disappears soon after, while
happiness persists. Fun, though we relentlessly pursue it, is often
not experienced at all. Take parties, for example. "Many People
attend [them] not because they actually have so much fun, let alone
become happier, at them but rather because they associate parties
with fun and believe that fun leads to happiness." ("Right.")
Mr. Prager finds the key to happiness in meaning and gratitude.
One price of living in a secular culture is the assumption it carries
the way an ocean breeze will sometimes carry the scent of dead
fish, penetrating every beachside house that existence is ultimately
meaningless. To fend off despair, we may willfully assign a transcendent
value to our jobs, relationships or political causes. But a thoughtful
secularist can't entirely forget that in the end all these values
are arbitrary, "made up," as Mr. Prager says. And "it
is quite difficult to be happy if we stare into the mirror each
morning and see only the random product of meaningless forces,
stellar dust that happens to be self aware." ("Exactly.")
Religious faith provides an antidote for that depressed fellow
looking back at you from the mirror, not only by explaining that
the universe does in fact mean something but by providing a forum
for expressing the other key to happiness: gratitude. In traditional
Christian and Jewish liturgies, prayer consists overwhelmingly
not of petitions but of thanks. This isn't for God's benefit, but
for ours. "We tend to think that it is being unhappy that
leads people to complain, but it is truer to say that it is complaining
that leads to people becoming unhappy. Become grateful and you
will become a much happier person." ("How true.")
Anyone who feels unhappy more than he would like will benefit from
reading this book, but its relevance extends beyond the personal.
America is a less happy country than you might expect from our
pulsing economy and increasingly safe cities. The amount of complaining
one hears surely puzzles immigrants from the Third World. To such
observers it must seem that almost every American is the victim
of his own "vast right wing conspiracy," in Mrs. Clinton's
phrase, or its functional equivalent.
Some of the mystery of this is clarified by Mr. Prager's insightful
book. One principle enemy of happiness, he explains, is "expectations." It's
one thing to hope and work for the things we want, quite another
to expect them as if they are automatically deserved. If ever there
were a society permeated by expectations, the fulfillment ofwhich
is guaranteed in many instances by no less than the federal government,
it's ours.
Mr. Klinghoffer is literary editor at National Review. |
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