The good mood of the soul
Which is so easily murdered by Zoom
The pursuit of happiness is a problem
The next time someone tells you I just want you to be happy, run. They do not have your best interests at heart.
Pursuing happiness is encoded in our American cultural DNA, and yet we’re among the unhappiest developed countries in the world.1 It was a bad goal to begin with! (Thanks a lot, hometown president/inventor of America.)
Our misbegotten national desire to secure happiness—a fleeting state!—has led to much misery: unchecked crony capitalism, waste, abuse, oppression, marginalization, you name it.
We should be chasing joy instead. We (I) don’t, because joy is a long, slow, lifelong accomplishment. It doesn’t come from things. It might come from love and relationships and children and wisdom and the Divine.
This finally CLICKED for me, like a flame, when I stumbled on this passage from theologian Anne Robertson, who was explaining the ancient Greek concepts for happiness and joy.
I found her thanks to Brenè Brown, who writes:
“She explains that the Greek word for happiness is Makarios, which was used to describe the freedom of the rich from normal cares and worries, or to describe a person who received some form of good fortune, such as money or health. Robertson compares this to the Greek word for joy, which is chairo. Chairo was described by the ancient Greeks as the ‘culmination of being’ and the ‘good mood of the soul.’ Robertson writes, ‘Chairo is something, the ancient Greeks tell us, that is found only in God and comes with virtue and wisdom. It isn’t a beginner’s virtue; it comes as the culmination. They say its opposite is not sadness, but fear.’”
We are indeed chasing happiness in the USA: the feeling of wealth that gives us contentment and satisfaction and comfort. Happiness is the temporary freedom the rich can enjoy—for a time, until we need more money to keep riding that wave.
On this vital difference between happiness and joy, the marvelous Ross Gay said:
“Sometimes I think there’s a conception of joy as meaning something like — like something easy. And to me, joy has nothing to do with ease. And joy has everything to do with the fact that we’re all going to die.”
Accordingly, we have a hard time prioritizing joy. Sounds like hard work! Instead of chasing a temporary state, of wealth or happiness, what would it look like to chase after the culmination of being instead? What different choices would we make? How radically would our lives change?
As Robertson says, this is not for kids; it’s not a beginner’s virtue. I’m thinking about this a lot right now. I’m not even very sure what to do with these thoughts, with this injunction to choose joy instead of happiness, except to drop these sentences in this newsletter: a mental dumping ground, a digital notebook, a postcard to the void, a brief memento mori. At the very least, I’m grateful for how these words from Robertson and Gay are sticking in my throat.
If you have to attend a lecture on Zoom, maybe don’t go at all
I was in an audience in a large theater recently. On a giant screen, a famous designer was being beamed in from her New York apartment to talk to us about how she’s great.
It began with the familiar, tedious charade of both parties yelling at the other that we couldn’t hear or that they were on mute. After 10 minutes of this rigamarole, the final audio quality was poor. The video itself was lagging. She couldn’t see us at all, and we could see every pore on her face. She also couldn’t hear us, save for the one person at a time who had a mic. The sound of her voice vacillated between a whisper and a terrifying boom. It was, in short, a terrible experience. But then it got even worse.
Once the presentation was over, a Q&A commenced. A French designer in the audience tried to ask her a question with the microphone. I noticed him immediately when I sat down, because he was the best-dressed person in the entire theater, and thus clearly identified himself as not-American. (American male designers dress like they’re in The National, which is fine, but not chic.)
He started to ask her an interesting question about how her AI illustrations would be licensed, and she cut him off mid-sentence. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying!” she shouted at him, at all of us. His accent was strong, yes, but it was all the more rude and embarrassing because she wasn’t with us, in the flesh.
The French designer sighed audibly, and I wanted to slink out of my chair and out of the room. It was mortifying and disrespectful.
We’ve all become so inured to Zoom as a way of communicating with each other that we don’t often pause to consider how bad it is. Yes, it’s a marvel of technology. Yes, it (maybe) saved our jobs during the pandemic. But as a way of communicating with people in live time it’s subpar.
I think we all know this instinctively, and yet we keep trying to have important conversations via video, as if it were the same as having them in person. So much is lost in translation. So much is sacrificed when we rely on these convenient technologies to try to learn from and deeply understand fellow human beings.
Yes, I’m grateful for how Zoom can allow us to have conversations across time zones. But is it really any better than phones? I’m not sure.
As I left the theater and cut my eyes over to the rightfully annoyed, fashionable designer, I kept thinking that if a lecture has to be on Zoom, best not to have it at all. I’d much rather have listened to a not-famous designer stand up in front of us, in the flesh, and talk about lunch meat or fantasy football or managerial accounting—or truly anything else at all—than go through what we’d just endured.
Two great poems
Poem one: Husband got a prize for this poem, and I am proud and impressed and can’t believe, even now, after all these years, that he lives with me and sleeps in my bed! You won’t believe it either!
Warmly recommend “Poem with Misremembered Vermeer,” by Guion Pratt: It’s got everything! Mushrooms, boundary lines, desire, art! All the things you know and love him for, and with a side of “unexpected muscularity,” as the judge says. Hot!
Poem two: Mary Ruefle, “Kiss of the Sun,” read by aforementioned hot husband to me on the deck, with a glass of cabernet franc in hand, coming close to aforementioned glimpses of joy:
Currently reading
The Big Relief, David Zahl
The Heiress/Ghost Acres, Lightsey Darst
Difficult Loves, Italo Calvino
Superbloom, Nicholas Carr
World Population Review (2024)
To your husband: beautifully done.
To you: the pursuit of happiness must have seemed to be such a glamorous line in its birth, but it feels now like the curse cast across the cradle by a fairy godmother. We've rather written our own capacity to love life right out of the story with our obsessive stalking of ever-fleeting happiness. Thank you for the reminder to get back to the work of Ross Gay. I needed that.