Thick or Thin

I've come to think that happiness isn't really produced by conscious accomplishments. Happiness is a measure of how thickly the unconscious parts of our minds are intertwined with other people and with activities. happiness is determined by how much information and affection flow through us covertly every day and year." in Social Animal, by David Brooks, New Yorker, January 17, 2011.

I have had my suspicions about the achievement, money, acquisitions, theory of happiness for sometime now. Perhaps, since those long years working on the dissertation where one has to break down happiness into much smaller chunks if one is to survive such a long, sustained, and mostly uneventful, unrecognized, financially depleting endeavor. Imagining myself walking on the stage accepting that cape and diploma did fuel some work, as well as fantasies about a well-paying and stimulating tenure-track job, but putting off happiness for months then years as these fantasies required, wouldn't take me long past breakfast before I was utterly exhausted by the enormity of the task at hand.

Happiness, well-being, I found, in my morning walk, bike ride into the office, that really strong coffee they served in the student lounge. There were the children I played with at summer camps during breaks from school, Saturdays and Sundays (when I finally stopped working on the weekend), watching Love Boat after the late late news. There were the friends from so many different countries who filled my mind with new stories, fiction, and yoga which I started 20 years ago and haven't stopped since.

The walk across the stage never happened nor did that perfect tenure-track job materialize. The happiness that came from all that hard work was just that; happiness pried free in the moment exploring a new thought, feeling the spring breeze, sharing my worries with friends. I cried after the defense because it was over, because it was so anti-climactic, because I had learned of the sheer beauty of effort, in an of itself.