[lit-ideas] Happiness or Meaning?
- From: "John McCreery" <john.mccreery@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: Lit-Ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 23:50:48 +0900
Scanning the bookshelves in terms of something to read before bed, my eyes
are caught by Jeb Rubenfeld's The Interpretation of Murder, whose title
suggests the conceit around which the novel is built, a murder that takes
place during Sigmund Freud's visit to America in 1909. Haven't read that in
a while, I think. I turn to the first paragraphs of the first chapter and
read,
There is no mystery to happiness.
Unhappy men are all alike. Some wound they suffered long ago, some wish
denied, some blow to pride, some kindling spark of love put out by scorn--or
worse, indifference--cleaves to them, or they to it, and so they live each
day within a shroud of yesterdays. The happy man does not look back. He
doesn't look ahead. He lives in the present.
But there's the rub. The present can never deliver one thing: meaning. The
ways of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man
need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he
wants meaning -- the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life -- a man
must reinhabit his past, however, dark, and live for the future, however
uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all,
insisting only that we choose between them.
What do you, dear friends, make of this, I wonder? Does it sound true or
false, subtle or simplistic, insightful or pretentious?
John
--
John McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
Tel. +81-45-314-9324
http://www.wordworks.jp/
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