blueming
if we can stand outside the borders of time
- Sep 21, 2018
- 245
One of my favourite books is Mark Twain's The Mysterious Stranger. It's centred around the character Satan who challenges and questions conventional views on morality, existence, free will etc. There are a lot of themes like that explored in the story but after reading it again some of his takes on "happiness" have specifically caught my attention.
"Are you so unobservant as not to have found out that sanity and happiness are an impossible combination? No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is. Only the mad can be happy, and not many of those. The few that imagine themselves kings or gods are happy, the rest are no happier than the sane. Of course, no man is entirely in his right mind at any time."
"Every man is a suffering-machine and a happiness-machine combined. The two functions work together harmoniously, with a fine and delicate precision, on the give-and-take principle. For every happiness turned out in the one department the other stands ready to modify it with a sorrow or a pain--maybe a dozen. In most cases the man's life is about equally divided between happiness and unhappiness. When this is not the case the unhappiness predominates--always; never the other. Sometimes a man's make and disposition are such that his misery- machine is able to do nearly all the business. Such a man goes through life almost ignorant of what happiness is. Everything he touches, everything he does, brings a misfortune upon him. You have seen such people? To that kind of a person life is not an advantage, is it? It is only a disaster. Sometimes for an hour's happiness a man's machinery makes him pay years of misery."
I wholly agree with these views. A state of continuous happiness is unattainable. Every bit of happiness is countered with a corresponding amount of unhappiness - often the balance is skewed towards unhappiness with leads to lives filled predominantly with suffering. I think it's a tragic existence when even brief moments of joy come at the price of prolonged misery. "True" happiness must be a result of madness, reserved only for those who are delusional and ignorant of life's realities.
Is life worth living at all when for most of us, it's just filled with an almost endless misery with random moments of happiness thrown at us from time to time? It's not just the outright tragedies, but also the smaller inconveniences that accumulate and make your life just a little bit harder. Sometimes I feel like life is like a drug and we are all addicted. It's toxic, destructive and is poisoning us inside and out but it occasionally delivers us a little dopamine rush and in the end we find ourselves ignoring the damage it causes, deluding ourselves that these fleeting moments are worth it and relentlessly pursuing the next high.
Oh for anyone who's interested in reading the book: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3186/3186-h/3186-h.htm
"Are you so unobservant as not to have found out that sanity and happiness are an impossible combination? No sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he sees what a fearful thing it is. Only the mad can be happy, and not many of those. The few that imagine themselves kings or gods are happy, the rest are no happier than the sane. Of course, no man is entirely in his right mind at any time."
"Every man is a suffering-machine and a happiness-machine combined. The two functions work together harmoniously, with a fine and delicate precision, on the give-and-take principle. For every happiness turned out in the one department the other stands ready to modify it with a sorrow or a pain--maybe a dozen. In most cases the man's life is about equally divided between happiness and unhappiness. When this is not the case the unhappiness predominates--always; never the other. Sometimes a man's make and disposition are such that his misery- machine is able to do nearly all the business. Such a man goes through life almost ignorant of what happiness is. Everything he touches, everything he does, brings a misfortune upon him. You have seen such people? To that kind of a person life is not an advantage, is it? It is only a disaster. Sometimes for an hour's happiness a man's machinery makes him pay years of misery."
I wholly agree with these views. A state of continuous happiness is unattainable. Every bit of happiness is countered with a corresponding amount of unhappiness - often the balance is skewed towards unhappiness with leads to lives filled predominantly with suffering. I think it's a tragic existence when even brief moments of joy come at the price of prolonged misery. "True" happiness must be a result of madness, reserved only for those who are delusional and ignorant of life's realities.
Is life worth living at all when for most of us, it's just filled with an almost endless misery with random moments of happiness thrown at us from time to time? It's not just the outright tragedies, but also the smaller inconveniences that accumulate and make your life just a little bit harder. Sometimes I feel like life is like a drug and we are all addicted. It's toxic, destructive and is poisoning us inside and out but it occasionally delivers us a little dopamine rush and in the end we find ourselves ignoring the damage it causes, deluding ourselves that these fleeting moments are worth it and relentlessly pursuing the next high.
Oh for anyone who's interested in reading the book: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3186/3186-h/3186-h.htm
