It is easy to be heavy, hard to be light.
— G. K. Chesterton
Despite being six foot four and nearly 300 pounds himself, Chesterton wasn't talking about obesity. Here's the context of the quote.
When I began this post (in 2012!), it was intended to be ruminations on Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project, which I reviewed briefly here. The quotations I pulled out in preparation are below; almost 13 years later, I'd have to re-read the book to make any sensible comments, so I'm just going to leave the quotes as is, without the ruminations.
Happiness, some people think, isn't a worthy goal; it's a trivial, American preoccupation, the product of too much money and too much television. They think that being happy shows a lack of values, and that being unhappy is a sign of depth.
Some people associate happiness with a lack of intellectual rigor.
Of course, it's cooler not to be happy. There's a goofiness to happiness, an innocence, a readiness to be pleased. Zest and enthusiasm take energy, humility, and engagement; taking refuge in irony, exercising destructive criticism, or assuming an air of philosophical ennui is less taxing.
Other people cultivate unhappiness as a way to control others. They cling to unhappiness because without it they'd forgo the special consideration that unhappiness secures: the claim to pity and attention.
The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It's more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted. No one is careful of his feelings or tries to keep his spirits high. He seems self-sufficient; he becomes a cushion for others. And because happiness seems unforced, that person usually gets no credit.
There's yet another group of people who have a superstitious dread of admitting to happiness, for fear of tempting fate. Apparently, this is practically a universal human instinct and seen in nearly all cultures—the dread of invoking cosmic anger by calling attention to good fortune.
If you don't believe you're happy, you're not. As Publilius Syrus observed, "No man is happy who does not think himself so." If you think you're happy, you are. That's why [Saint] Thérèse [of Lisieux] said,"I take care to appear happy and especially to be so."
A prayer attributed to Saint Augustine of Hippo includes the line "shield your joyous ones" [the innocent and child-like]:
Tend your sick ones, O Lord Jesus Christ;
rest your weary ones; bless your dying ones;
sooth your suffering ones; pity your afflicted ones;
shield your joyous ones.
And all for your love's sake.
Episcopalians will recognize this from the Evening Prayer section in the Book of Common Prayer:
Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give thine angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for thy love’s sake. Amen.
Why worry about the joyous ones? ... We non-joyous types suck energy and cheer from the joyous ones; we rely on them to buoy us with their good spirit and to cushion our agitation and anxiety. At the same time, because of a dark element in human nature, we're sometimes provoked to try to shake the enthusiastic, cheery folk out of their fog of illusion—to make them see that the play was stupid, the money was wasted, the meeting was pointless. Instead of shielding their joy, we blast it.
There's a lot of misery in the world: pain, fear, tragedy, and immeasurable suffering. That is all the more reason to seek, find, create, and celebrate happiness when we can. Let's not play the "more miserable than thou" game. Let's dare to be happy, and encourage the joy of others.
