Crumpled Notes

So it’s been over a year since either of us posted on this site, but tonight I’m feeling a little wordy so I thought I’d jump on here and write a bit. I have no topic really. Just an urge to write and a headcold that makes it uncomfortable to be in bed. So I’m taking the name “Crumpled Notes” literally and writing a little note to you.

It’s weird realizing that time marches on. That our kids are older than I really think they should be. That I’ve known you half my life now. It’s weird that even though we talk about our kids, our marriages, our *gasp* feelings, but yet I feel to need to talk more, say more. It’s like I’m trying to expel something and choke on it instead… kinda like a hairball, I guess. About what I’m not even sure…………..

Last night I stayed up a good portion of the night, rebuilding my system software and reading the Nora Roberts book I borrowed - “Tears of the Moon.” A lovely Irish romance and brain candy extraordinaire. The trouble with brain candy though is that it goes by too fast.

But today I’m reading a book called, “Stumbling on Happiness” by Daniel Gilbert - something that’ll take me a few days to read, at least. I’m not quite a third of the way through and so far I’m fascinated. He uses an example of conjoined twins (at the forehead) who state that they are “happy - not merely resigned or contented, but joyful, playful, and optimistic.” (p.29) Something that the average person wouldn’t guess on nor in which state they could imagine being happy. Not only these twins though, but a referenced medical researcher found that the “‘desire to remain together so widespread among communicating conjoined twins as to be practically universal.’” (p 30) And yet as a community we cheer at successful separation of conjoined twins and are saddened by the loss of those who die but place the loss in the “well, it had to be done” category because the idea of not being separate individuals seems like an impossible state to be happy in.

So what does this mean to the state of happiness? The author goes on to discuss different theories of why the girls might consider themselves “happy” - they don’t know what happy is, they don’t have a reference to being truly happy, etc - but the truly fascinating part to me is this:

“The philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes concluded that our experience is the *only* thing about which we may be completely sure and that everything else we think we know is merely an inference from that. And yet, we have seen that when we say with moderate precision what we mean by words such as *happiness*, we still can’t be sure that two people who claim to be happy are having the same experience, or that our current experience of happiness is really different from our past experience of happiness, or that we are *having* an experience of happiness at all.” (p 63-4)

So all we can do is trust we know what happiness is when we have it, regardless of our situation, but that no two happinesses are the same nor can we even be certain that we’re consciously aware of all the times we are happy. Ok, so where does that leave us?

Well, it leaves me with two-thirds of a book to read and the need to ponder the study of “What is happiness?” Maybe even more topics for future blogs. But all this reading about happiness - in both the romance novel and the more serious psychology discussion - has got me thinking about what makes me happy, if I’m even aware of it, and why I feel sometimes feel, especially lately, that I’m on the short end of the happy stick.