On Happiness

A prerequisite, I think, is that you ought not to be intelligent.

I remember once, having sprained an ankle, I couldn’t sleep because of the throbbing pain, and while so beset in the midnight hours my empathies stretched out to all those other wretched souls writhing in pain far worse than my own. I cried for the victims of all sorts of cancers, bemoaning their tortured fates, squirming from their ache in cold, hygienic, marbled hospital wards. I knew very well that my sprained ankle, such a silly ailment if there ever was one – the bane of the clumsy – could compare in no way to the agony felt by the really ill. It is in our own moments of suffering that we can have empathy with the suffering of others, and I’m sure many a man has felt similar compassion when he found himself in a situation of discomfort.

The intelligent man, the honest man, need no autobiographical moment to evoke empathy. The artificial construct of the imagination, yeah the knowledge of life (that life is a series of experiences many of which are toil and suffering), is enough to create in the intelligent man, yes the honest man, sympathies with people he do not know but for the anthropomorphic moulding of his imaginings. Of course, one can be intelligent and deceitful and lie to yourself; assembling a padded cage of denial. Yet, one has to wonder whether such a man can authentically be called intelligent.

However, if you are a wise man, i.e. honest and intelligent, you will always be aware that your own happiness rings as a foiled mocking note against the unheard cries of the suffering. For this reason, I believe, the intelligent man cannot be happy. An intelligent man that welcomes self-deceit cannot be happy for his own lies taunt him; the intelligent man that in honesty accepts the true state of affairs is unhappy too, for the truth of others’ suffering flies in the face of his own comforts and pleasures.

The solution is to be either a simpleton or a sadomasochist. As for the former, that’s not much of a choice. A simpleton ambitious for intelligence will not know the life of discontent that awaits him until he has acquired sufficient intelligence and once he has acquired it, it will be too late; for one can seldom return to your former state of stupidity. As for the latter, you need to be of that tandem-disposition. Being only a sadist will not ensure you durable happiness, since it is only a matter of time before some suffering befell you too. And being a masochist only will not cause enduring happiness either, for some fickle good fortune tends to smile, occasionally, even on the most unfortunate of creatures. Only a sadomasochist, and better yet a stupid one at that, who is preferably void of intellectual ambition, can truly be happy this side of Heaven. Ironically, it is Heaven, of all places, where the sadomasochist would suffer most, and not be happy.