Florida Pier : writings and about / jmcvey.net
Devastating Happiness
“The Gentler View,” Harper’s Weekly (August 17, 1912) : 26
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Happiness is a terrifying thing to come upon one suddenly. It is an open question whether the theory that when perfect happiness is achieved the world will come to an end is not an inversion of sequence. It seems so much more likely that happiness would be so devastating that the world would dwindle to an end because no one saw to its going on. It seems so much more likely that happiness would be so devastating that the world would dwindle to an end because no one saw to its going on. Elimination is necessary if we are to accomplish anything of value and there is nothing so effectively eliminating as unhappiness. Unless geniuses were unhappy, they would not be geniuses; they would be rosy, rotund, beaming little men. It is no credit to any of us that we do our duty, for it is only done when everything else is so lacking in diversion, not to say actively annoying, that our desperation drives us to doing our duty. Happiness, like health, makes us obtuse. Its dissipating effect is such that it scatters us to the four winds of Heaven, and the sum total is precisely as though we had never been. We are busy from waking to sleeping enjoying our friends, or our babies, or our circulation, or any of the dozen other things that waste the seconds so pleasingly. To say “I am happy” is to say “I am lost” — and if it is a pleasant sleep to sleep that makes it none the less oblivion.
On the other hand, if one has no friends or babies or circulation, if into the bargain one has ill health, a family that irritates, furniture to shudder at, no petty responsibilities, time on one’s hands, and the prick of discontent, one is almost sure to become creative. Then by the greatest luck in the world circumstances have so arranged themselves that you are kept alert by anger (it matters very little at what). With the dangerous expansiveness of happiness removed, and the precious inhibitiveness of unhappiness substituted, one’s forces are conserved, the outlet is limited to one source, and that a directed, consciously formulated one. It is nine chances to one that the result will be worthy of being handed on for the other unhappy people to appreciate and the happy people to criticize blandly.
That is why to nurture talent is to kill talent. A talent is not a talent if it is encouraged; it is only a febrile accomplishment. That is why to nurture talent is to kill talent. A talent is not a talent if it is encouraged; it is only a febrile accomplishment. If one is to bring about any change one must live in a state of fury, and it is quite out of the question to be furious if you are comfortable and thought well of. If you are to work, but to do things that must be classed with the stock already on hand and added to them, it is better that you do not work at all. If your work is an addition to the sum of the world’s possessions, it is a change you burned to bring about and you burned because you were incensed at something. The bad management of the army, the status of the modern business man in the eyes of the dry professional mind, the ineptitude of modern art, the complacency of the propertied class, the obtuse average inanity that prevented recognition of your fiery rareness — something of this kind had to heat you to the point where you became capable of change and where you let everything else go for the fine flavor of showing the world how things ought to be.
When your work is well under way and it begins to pay to be angry the money coming in will permit you to cool your anger and thus bring about your own downfall. When at the age of fifty your anger has permitted you to collect a number of expensive playthings about you your stream of creation will run dry, and you will wonder why and so will every one else; but your wife or your conscience or some one will know that it is because there are such a number of pleasant things to be done, all of which have a curious trick of seeming predominatingly important. The reasoning that used to go on in your mind tortured you; the only relief from it was work and action. Your unhappiness was so great that you felt a perfect ecstasy in expressing it, with delicious satisfied exhaustion to follow. Now such soothing thoughts flow slowly across one’s consciousness as: “Is it worth while adding to the amount of mediocre work in the world? Is it not rather egotistical and beside the mark? Would it not be more to the point to add to the sum of the world’s happiness by being an extremely happy person?” Such thoughts, of course, lull one to amiable puttering over agreeable things that do not particularly matter Would it not be more to the point to add to the sum of the world’s happiness by being an extremely happy person?” Such thoughts, of course, lull one to amiable puttering over agreeable things that do not particularly matter, with a mind put to sleep through lazy smiling. A nice end for the world to come to!
Happiness should be classed with old age, or disease, or inherited habits, or other things that come upon one or that one succumbs to. People in any of these predicaments are leniently treated and even bolstered up with pretenses, but they are understood. Oh, they are clearly understood. The world and nature make no bones about placing them when it comes to cataloguing. Life hurries right by them, only stopping to place them impatiently out of the way, saying, crossly: “I won’t walk over you if I can help it, but you can’t expect me to take you into account or accommodate my pace to yours; you must just play around in the corners and give as little trouble as you can, while I take up all the center and perhaps hit you occasionally by accident.”
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