Theories of Happiness

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVI, Issue 3447, 24 March 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

Theories of Happiness

PLAY THE ROLE WHICH BEST SERVES YOUR OUTLOOK.

DREAMS AND ENVIRONMENT TAKE A BIG PART.

CULTIVATE CONTENTMENT AS THE FOUNDATION OF HAPPINESS.

Happiness is not found by selfishly seeking it; on that point moralist and philosopher are agreed. Yet men and women in every generation have engaged in the search. The alternative is unhappiness. and no rational person ever deliberately sought that. It is one of the most familiar facts of history that some of the noblest of characters have voluntarily assumed drastic forms of self-sacrifice. Material self-denials, bodily lacerations, spiritual abnegations by such means abiding satisfaction has been sought. Happiness might seem remote from the processes, but happiness has been the objective. To what extent the assumption of stern discipline and the desire to be happy can be distinguished and disentangled are questions for the casuist. The average mortal is usually content to seek happiness on some humbler, level. The vast majority of individuals are engaged in seeking happiness without being at all clear as to what happiness is. Definitions there are in abundance, but these are so varied as to be valueless. To the general question Mr H. van Loon, the American historian, writing recently, makes an interesting contribution. Postulating that the quest of happiness is at the root of every human action, he surveys a mass of data, and reaches the conclusion that " that man is happy who is able to play the role which best satisfies him in his own eyes."

The conclusion breaks with the more familiar conception of happiness. There is a widespread belief that happiness can be assured byNneans of success in the market-place. Although history belies the belief, many persist in putting it. to the test. One of America's multi-millionaires was asked what was his supreme ambition in life. "To make profits," was the response. " And then ? " asked the interviewer. "To make more profits," answered the millionaire, waving his hand. The interview was over; success had not brought him happiness; it had bred in him a disease. That a thing so precious should be elusive is as inevitable as that the parvenu's and the ascetic's conception of it should be as far as the poles apart. Diversity in ideals of happiness is intelligible when due heed is paid to the complex thing human nature is. In every person there are countless strands of character, each a link with some long-forgotten ancestor. Tiny legacies of impulses and activities of unknown forebears lie deep and unsuspected, in our being. In some people they only faintly stir; in others 'they occasionally assert themselves with quaint effect and with unrealised strength. Out of these elements arises man's frequent desire to be something other than he is, his deep conviction that happiness for him is to be found in some role other than the one for which he has been cast. This phase of atavism is

readily discernible in children. Most parents can bear witness to the tendency of the child to create some imaginary companion whose fellowship is entirely exclusive to himself. With this creation of fancy the child can make himself wondrously happy. As the prison-house of reality closes in, this other fanciful being is driven out. But not always. Sir James M. Barrie has retained an unerring knowledge of child nature, and in one of his whimsical addresses he made great play with his imaginary friend MeConachie, who was that wise and good and strong person Barrie secretly aspired to be. Thereby Barrie lifted the veil from the truth that not children alone find happiness in make-believe. St. Paul acknowledged that when he was a child he thought as a child, but when he became a man he put away childish things. Not all men and women share his strength of character. Unsuspected legions of them have some dream role in which they feel sure they would have been much more successful and much more happy. The little girl experiences the thrill of being the fairy princess; the small boy imagines himself the world's most daring ace. Grown older, the girl secretly understudies tli& popular film star. The boy whose moral growth has been neglected delights in being the leader of the local "push." It is the nearest approach he can make to being captain of a skull-and-crossbones pirate ship, which role some remote ancestor probably filled. It is the habit of the orthodox to deplore such crudeness, and yet the impulse to indulge in some dream role seems universal. In practically any grown group of men. if the current of conversation be turned in the required direction, it will be revealed that nearly every second individual would have chosen for his life's work something other than the thing he does. The lawyer would prefer to have been a banker, the banker an engineer, the engineer a doctor. Each is sure that in the other sphere he would have been* a success, and in idle hours he derives a secret and satisfying

happiness from contemplating himself in his dream role. One of the strange by-products of the Great War was that it brought to some men an exultant sense of freedom in an entirely new environment; and in that environment they seemed to become transformed. They displayed qualities whose existence their friends had never suspected in the days of peace. For many such men war meant that, in part at least, their dream role had come true. War, however, is a catastrophe unredeemed by the fact that it may bring to a comparative few deliverance from the tyranny of a life of routine. And so, like children of older growth, hosts of men and women continue to live from time to time in their particular world of) make-believe. The youth who is conscious of bodily weakness pictures himself as a man of lion strength; the elderly spinster sees herself an honoured wife and adored mother; the man who is tongue-tied loves to imagine himself a glowing, compelling orator. The happiness is vicarious, and its forms are infinite, but how many people could, if they would, confess that they are secretly addicted to it ? Occasionally it happens that some individuals are able to " play the role which best satisfies them in their own eyes." Probably it is most frequently so in the finer occupations of life. To what extent the artist, composer, or musician is satisfactorily playing his chosen role may be a matter of doubt on the part of the critics, but if it is the role which satisfies him best in his own eyes, and he is able to play it, he is probably assured of as large a measure of happiness as is to mortals granted. Much of the unlabelled tragedy of life is due to the fact that so many human pegs of square formations are inserted in rounded holes of duty. The man who is doing as his life's work that which he would rather be doing than anything else on earth should frequently remind himself that this world has few things more satisfying to offer. If the man so placed is not happy, there are probably other good reasons why he does not deserve to be.