Fawcett Brian - Human Happiness

Brian Fawcett is the author of more than twenty books, including Cambodia: A Book for People Who Find Television Too Slow, The SecretJournals of Alexander Mackenzie, and Virtual Clearcut, or The WayThings Are In My Hometown. He is a former columnist for the Globe and Mail, has written articles and reviews for most of Canadas major newspapers and magazines, and is a founding editor of the internationally followed Internet news service www.dooneyscafe.com. Fawcett was born and raised in Prince George, B.C., and now lives in Toronto.

HUMAN HAPPINESS

ALSO BY BRIAN FAWCETT

Cambodia: A Book for People Who Find Television Too Slow

Public Eye: An Investigation Into the Disappearance of the World

Gender Wars: A Novel and Some Conversation About Sex and Gender

Virtual Clearcut, or The Way Things Are In My Hometown

Robin Blaser (with Stan Persky)

BRIAN FAWCETT

HUMAN

happiness

THOMAS ALLEN PUBLISHERS
TORONTO

Copyright 2011 by Brian Fawcett

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any meansgraphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval systemswithout the prior written permission of the publisher, or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Fawcett, Brian, 1944
Human happiness / Brian Fawcett.

ISBN 978-0-88762-808-5

1. Fawcett, Brian, 1944. 2. Fawcett, Brian, 1944 Family.
3. Authors, Canadian (English)20th centuryBiography. I. Title.

PS8561.A94Z468 2011 C813'.54 C2011-903593-6

Editor: Patrick Crean
Cover design: Sputnik Design
Cover image: courtesy of the author
Text design: Gordon Robertson

Published by Thomas Allen Publishers,
a division of Thomas Allen & Son Limited,
390 Steelcase Road East,
Markham, Ontario L3R 1G2 Canada

www.thomasallen.ca

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program.

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

We acknowledge the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporations Ontario Book Initiative.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

11 12 13 14 15 5 4 3 2 1

Text printed on a 30% PCW recycled content and FSC certified stock

Printed and bound in Canada

H APPINESS is most often defined as a state of mind similar to, but more encompassing than, contentment, satisfaction, pleasure, or joy: what you are to yourself rather than what you feel at any given moment or are seen to be by others.

In the distant past happiness was associated with the Greek word Eudamonia: living a good life, which is to say, without being under threat from barbarians (however one defines them) or the gods.

Happiness is central to Buddhist thinking, which focuses on gaining freedom from suffering by following an Eightfold Path aimed ultimately at overcoming desire. In the last half of the twentieth century both happiness and desire became more closely linked with shopping, and in the twenty-first it has become a consumer commodity in and of itself, usually linked to disposable income and Oprah Winfreylevel therapy or, in some cultures, with detonating bandoliers of C5 explosives amongst the infidels so you can go to a heaven filled with voluptuous virgins.

My findings are that human life is morally and physically a mess and that the future is utterly unpredictable. Thus, true happiness lies in the ability to live with ambiguity, and the road to happiness runs along those paths through the dark wood that arent blocked by the paralyzing blindness of ambivalence, or slicked to individual and collective idiocy by simplifications that cant bear the sunlight.

Earlier versions of parts of this book have appeared in Descant, on www.dooneyscafe.com, and in The Heart DoesBreak: Canadian Writers on Grief and Mourning by Jean Baird and George Bowering, Random House, 2009.

The quotes on pages 163 and 177 are from Sherwin B. Nuland, How We Die: Reflections on Lifes Final Chapter, Vintage Books, New York, 1993, pages 168 and 169, respectively. The passage quoted from David Shields on page 9 is from Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2010, pages 2526. The lyrics to Little Things Mean a Lot on page 169: words and music by Edith Lindeman and Carl Stutz, as recorded by Kitty Kallen in 1954.

T HE LAST TIME I TALKED to my mother, she announced that she hated my father. This was a couple of days before the end of November; she was in Penticton, B.C., and I was in Toronto. Id called her on the telephone to ask about a recipe for Christmas cookies, but that wasnt really why I called. While I talked to her the week before Id heard something odd in her voice, and I was checking to see if it had dissipated. It hadnt.

Theres not a hell of a lot thats wise or comforting you can say to your mother when she drops a bomb like that. Particularly when shes 90 years old. You just let her speak her piece, and hope there are no more bombers taxiing down the runway. And of course, hating the man shed been married to for 64 years wasnt the only thing she had on her mind. Shed spent the afternoon making the cookies I wanted the recipe for, shed just packaged up a batch of beef stew into meal-sized portions for the freezer, and was about to start sewing the green net Nanny Bags of Christmas treats that had been a favourite of the small kids in the family since Id been one of them. Did I think the kids still wanted them?

I assured her that they did, although I suspected, in a world filled with more spectacular confections, that they didnt care one way or another.

Your fathers supposed to be back from Kamloops any minute, she said, when I asked about him. Thats when she dropped her bomb. I cant say Ill be glad to see him. I think, (here was an auspicious pause as she considered what the right words should be) Ive finally gotten to the point where I hate him. Hes your father, but I really just hate him. So there.

The flat finality of it was disturbing, but it didnt exactly take me by surprise. Things hadnt been going well between them for a long time, and to tell the truth, the rest of the family wasnt getting along much better.

We were, at that moment, on the verge of a civil war, with several fronts.

My father had recently delivered his voting shares in the family holding company to my older brother, Ron, and the three of us were snarling back and forth at one another across the new breach it opened. My twin sisters werent getting along either, but their squabble, as always, was hard to read. Theyre identical twins who live 50 metres apart on Vancouver Island, and to them, everyone is an outsider. When they get going on one another, no one can really understand what its about, let alone stop it.