HAPPY TIMES!
It is quite evident to me as I read my favorite newspapers and magazines that the publishing tangent of our social order day does not subscribe to the much quoted maxim which decrees one “cannot buy happiness.”
Our entire social order would crumble into chaotic confusion if we actually believed in, and acted upon, such a sentiment. I think we get around it all by pretending that all the blessings we have as normal part of our daily life is just being supplemented, enhanced, enlarged, made more perfect - not being replaced. We are adding to our happiness, rather than purchasing a new stock. The means, then, that we are worthy of special commendation for being such good stewards of that which we already have and that we have been taking excellent care of it seeking ever to increase it's meaning in our lives and make life more complete and enjoyable for ourselves and those around us. Who could possibly accuse us of attempting to buy happiness? We are extending it's powers to be a worthy adjunct to our existence.
Your can buy diversion, the advertisements tells me, what may help shake off any burdens of doubt we may have about our lives and guide us into ofter unseen paths of contentment. That advertised economy cruise to Cancun, for instance – six wonderful days and about as many nights are typical of such enhancements of the already good life we enjoy, otherwise we could even think of such a Mexican vacation much less finance it. The ads in the glossy – inked to the very edge of each magazine or foldout – and the chopped-up sequence of tantalizing three-second suggestions which keep the viewer's busy visually while they are being firmly sold verbally on having whichever pictorial bait caught their fancy best. You, too, can enhance your good life.
Another methods of improving outward qualities of happiness is for you to learn the art of self-effacement. Make a concerned effort to think more of other people and, thus, less of yourself and your needs. I feel this compulsion strongly every time, for instance, I visit the Veteran's Hospital in our area. There I see people in far more need than I have ever been. Walk among them; talk with them and get a new view of loneliness and poverty ...the “minus values”of our culture.
Other less on how to improve the happiness quota in our lives is to watch small children at play, amongst themselves and unsupervised by by adults. Just yesterday on the cul-de-sac pavement outside my window I watched a very small boy teach himself to use a skateboard. Two other boys, older were “skating” back and forth and all around him. He had trouble holding his skateboard up in front of him where it was taller than he,and if he tried to step on it,as the older boys did, it skidded out from under his foot foot. At one point he saw the other "bellywhopping" down the slight incline in the road. He tried that and lacked a running start or a means of propulsion.,When he saw the others sit on their skateboards and push along with their feet, he tried that. The first attemptlanded him on his rear end because he too far back on the board. He slid forward and pedaled with his feet his feet and went down the hill laughing with the others. He did it again and again and here has never been a more perfect picture of happiness in one little boy. Watch other being happy. Learn. Emulate. That's a way of gaining new happiness.
One more happiness treatment comes to mind, much akin to the skateboard example. If you can find films videotapes, scripts of the comedy works of comedians Jack Benny, Red Skelton and Fred Allen you will have in hand an all time masterwork treatment of “how to” enjoy life. They all three depended heavily on self-effacement. Jack Benny would often built up complicated situations in which others in his cast were going to be in real trouble. He had it all rigged, however, so that when that moment of crisis hit – it all fell, comically, on him. That famous “look” of his told the entire story and evoked pity and laughter in his audiences.
Red Skelton did the same thing in shorter versions. He often tired to emulate someone and it usually ended in a super-pratfall such as only Skelton would dare undertake. Most of the time he escaped injury.
Fred Allen, much more of a writer, used it constantly in depicting the people who lived such fun-filled lives in his “Allen's Alley” feature on radio.
I suppose it still holds true that you “can't buy happiness”. Why buy it when you can borrow it so easily from other happy people? Ever more important is the fact that you can barter your happiness for that of as it evolves from your being genuine, real, earnest and fair-minded in all that you think, say or do.
A.L.M. September 13, 2004 [c849wds]
