Saturday, June 28, 2008

more on happiness

Happiness is often intolerable in other people. We grew up looking over our shoulders, making side-long glances, always on the lookout for someone who was having too much fun (or at least, more fun than we were). Laughter—or to use the demonic definition, “a meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience” —can almost cause a spiritual version of cardiac arrest in some. They see the giggling child, enthralled by the inch worm making its way down a skinny branch; the chuckling grandparent, amused by an old comic strip; the gurgling baby, mesmerized by the tinny music emanating from his toy. To these happy people, the joy comes from the simplicity of the moment, the pure and unadulterated delight in a single thing for no other reason than it is itself. The opinion or preference of others doesn’t matter to them. But this attitude can become infuriating to those who witness it. It’s not because the enjoyment of these things is harming someone else; it’s not even because such things should never be enjoyed. But do they have to enjoy everything? Why must God be “a hedonist at heart”, the unrepentant Creator of pleasures forevermore?

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