Is Happiness A Warm Gun - What Does Karl Marx Think?

Was Marx right about his definition of happiness; that a person is truly the happiest she can be when she is working in the flow of meaningful work that is performed out of the sheer joy and love for the work itself and not, and I repeat not, because it pays money?

I think a lot of artists say that they would be doing what they do even if it didn’t pay anything. One has to spend one’s time on this planet somehow, and if a true love for living is achieved through aspiring for something inherently meaningful for one, be it in the arts or being a lawyer or running a B&B, I believe lots of other things can be a lot worse and one can truthfully still say she is living a happy life.

When this idea was taught to me in class, along with the other major trends in philosophy and schools of thought, at a relatively young age, I did kind of feel at home with the skeletal concept of Marxist thought, wanting to be a writer and all, but for the most part, the true meaning of Marx’s point was sort of lost on me. The whole philosophy remained a little theoretic for me, only to be munched on in greater detail a lot later in life, much in the same way that when I reread Updike’s The Witches of Eastwick for the first time as an adult, it was a completely different book from what I remembered – which by the way is one of the reasons one should always reread her old favorites every five years or so: there might be some new point of view suddenly illuminated on the page that has until now eluded us, due to the fact we ourselves were young once and have now aged and progressed. There is a fine thought contributed to Anaïs Nin in reference to this phenomenon, that we do not perceive things as they are, but as we are, and I for one have time and time again found proof that her reflection is spot on.

Before I found my flow, or my voice, or whatever you call it, I struggled for what feels now like a lifetime with desperately having something to say, but never really finding the outlet for these intense emotions. I struggled as a writer, and very much so as a person, and felt a lot like the character Joey in Woody Allen’s Interiors, the little sister who so very much wants to express something and sort of tries her hand in everything, not really finding her medium as an artist, and therefore everything around her seems to crumble and lose meaning.

I did write my entire life in notebooks and journals, before finally working up the nerve to start putting stuff out there, or here, specifically. I remember talking to a fellow student, back when I was going to folk school specializing in the arts, a theater student, who told me a terribly sad story about her father, who was a writer, but developed such a high standard for himself that he began losing faith in his own words, never thinking anything was good enough to publish, and ended up not being able to write as much as a greeting card. The man became his own worst enemy, and I think that is pretty much what happened to me after leaving that safe haven of a school, convinced I was now off to write that great Finnish novel for the ages, then devastated when the words didn’t seem to come. I suffered from the worst kind of faker syndrome, absolutely certain that at any moment someone, anyone, might come up to me on the street, exclaiming: “Hey, you, with the beret! You’re not a writer, you are just a big fat fake! Now give me those books from your lap immediately!”

I banned myself from the halls of writers, somehow secretly knowing all along that I was wasting myself doing menial jobs, but never really being able to overcome my enormous fear of losing face, being humiliated, having someone tell me that I was no good, so I stopped even trying. I wrote in secret, filling up notebook after notebook in the finest Anaïs Nin vein, never realizing these were the dues I would have to pay, my own personal dues, because I was me and not someone else, someone with just enough ego to write off the verbal abuse of others as envious yapping, but a girl with no self-confidence at all, afraid to show my stuff to anyone, even to my closest people. The fear of failure stopped me altogether from being able to create anything.

I was talking about this with my friend J. the other day, and she said to me that she was all the time worried that her daughter would grow up to be like us, and so kept constantly encouraging her and telling her she was capable for any old thing her heart desired. We talked about how we were never given that lesson as kids, no one in our generation, we were the daughters of people who played it safe, parents always suggesting taking a nap instead of putting ourselves out there, always reminding us about the dangers of the world, the cure being shutting oneself off and keeping our aspirations to ourselves. It wasn’t that our generation’s parents were trying to harm us: on the contrary, they were so busy trying to keep us from harm that they ended up planting a very stubborn seed of intense fear of failure in all of us, instead of nurturing the courage, the risk-taker, the grabber-of-life-by-the-balls in us.

In my brief stint in therapy, my analyst theorized that my compulsive need for neatness and organizing everything around me derived from the fact that my mother shielded me too hard from the outside world, creating this absolutely safe haven inside our home where no one could ever hurt me, and my OCD was my brain’s attempt to recreate that sacred space all around me, in my work place, where I always have to have things on the counter in a certain way, and especially in my home, where, like my man likes to point out when he is mad at me, I have to have my surroundings so neat, the design magazine could pop by any day and be able to shoot the apartment.

It was a drag at the time, but in hindsight also extremely fruitful, all those years of solitary writing in my safe, holy place where no one could get to me ever.

Marx’s ultimate point was to have the workers of the world unite and have The Man taken out of the equation so that instead of acting as puppets for the capitalist, they would work for the work itself, for the meaning it brought to them, and, ultimately, for happiness itself.

Well, I gotta agree with Uncle Karl here. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to grow a moustache, tie a scarf around my neck and revolutionize my work place, nor am I telling anyone that it is necessary to quit their day job in order to find themselves, but the thing is, I have never been happier than I am today, writing. The act of writing makes me happier than any amount of fine sex, mutual love, eating, finding the perfect jeans for my particular ass, anything else my life has so far brought me. I do have memories and knowledge of being happy in my life before finding my happy place in writing, but as we all know, happiness can never be sustained, and no one can be happy all the time. I have said “I am happy” to my friends, family and significant others at times and meant it, but the feeling is just a glimpse, a small moment in the scheme of things, just like Winona Ryder’s character says in Reality Bites, “I’m happy in the moment, and then it’s like – gone”.

But with the writing, happiness can be sustained, just a little bit, but sustained nevertheless. I am quite happy to be the puppet to The Man four days a week, and a lot poorer than I used to be before I started writing in this serious way I am writing now, that is, almost every minute when I’m not at my day job or on one of my walks, when the rest of the time I can do what I love the most in this entire wonderful world. I wasn’t exactly making a fortune in my job before either, so it hasn’t been that severe a plunge in my living standard anyway. I am very aware that I am a late bloomer with this whole going public with my work –thing, but just like the fabulous country singer Lucinda Williams doesn’t seem to mind it, neither do I, in fact I think it gives this enterprise even more meaning, the idea that I now know I won’t live forever, that I’m only going to be around for a limited amount of time, and that I finally know what to do with myself with the time and the life that has been given to me.

Falling in love again in my late thirties, with someone who has proven instrumental in giving me the courage and self-confidence to do what I now do, has been a lucky break for me. Every time I become short of faith, every time I feel like it’s all just bull shit anyway, every time I start losing hope and feeling like I’ve got nothing, he is always there to give me the necessary ego boost, or a well-deserved kick in the butt, depending on what is needed. He never lets me waver, even for a second, let alone feel sorry for myself for not having a smidgen of talent. It is a rather surprising aspect of our relationship, considering how much we fight over mundane things in every other department of our lives, that he was the one who became my brick wall, my muse, and my greatest supporter. You can’t know this, so let me tell you that my man is someone who possesses an ego the size of Europe, so his constant and well-thought-out praise, and stepping out of the limelight to let me do my thing, have come somewhat as a shock to me. Like the aforementioned Ms. Nin has said, the world will give us plenty of beatings, so it is important to have the love and support from the home front, even if your beloved thought we were crazy in starting an enterprise that would swallow all our time and bring home no bacon. My man doesn’t seem to think I am crazy, at least any more than the usual amount, and he seems to have grasped the difficult thing about any art form: just because something doesn’t have monetary value, it doesn’t mean at all that it is devoid of meaning or worthless.

I never had this level of support before, and it feels more wonderful than I can say. Every one of us wants to hear we are golden, sometimes. Instead of skimping with the praise, would it really hurt us if we were a little more supportive with our loved ones and the people with whom we live our everyday life? It is as much my own fault as everyone else’s, and I am not saying that had I had a more supportive boyfriend way back when, I would have been a writer in my own right years ago. No. It took me this long for a reason, and I’m not sorry. I don’t think I have wasted time. I have lived, I have my heart broken and broken hearts in turn, I have something now I never would have had, had I began in my twenties: a clearer sense of who I am, what I am willing to sacrifice for this, and perspective.

Everyone is so busy right now labeling The United States the new enemy of the world, but I think there is something inherent in the people there that we, especially in my country, with the taciturn, somber, monosyllabic hesitator the prevailing personality type, would benefit taking an example from. It’s their almost supernatural confidence in themselves, and, even more, the way they cheer on their fellow man. Sure, they have their hecklers and naysayers and just plain dicks, too, as it is painfully apparent lately, but sometimes I have a feeling that those are all we have here. For instance, when a person’s business goes under, people gather like vultures to peck them while they are down, to gossip pettily and in an ill-wishing manner, and generally the atmosphere seems, still, in the twenty-first century, to be that of quiet disapproval and resentment, and to hear someone give a compliment, or thank the other person for a job well done, is still an unfortunate rarity, and an exception to the rule and not the other way around, as it should be.

I took my time, getting ready to become a writer, and that’s fine. Here’s what my doctor said when I was in the throes of my insomnia-induced depression and on three different kinds of medication, and telling her that I had even stopped writing, the very last resort to keep my sanity, and was now worried I was going bye-bye for good: “But all of this is just great ammunition for you. One day you’ll write about all of this.”

I have no idea what John Lennon meant in the song where I borrowed my title, apart from the obvious sexual references. Maybe he, too, meant to say that happiness is action. A well-known and often quoted anecdote goes, that when he met Yoko Ono, it was at one of her art exhibitions, and John was contemplating a work that displayed a ladder and a magnifying glass hanging high up from the ceiling, with a small what appeared to be a speck in the ceiling. He climbed up and took the magnifying glass, and through it read what it said in minuscule print. There was one word written in the ceiling: “Yes”. Later he would tell the story to the press and interviewers, saying that if the word had been “No”, they might not have ever met, but because it was a positive message, he was instantly interested.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono shared one of the world’s most dynamic and artistically fruitful, as well as one of the most photographed and mythical love stories ever.

Action is what gives us power, what makes us mighty. Just check out all the lovely ladies and gentlemen protesting right now. The atmosphere is joyful, almost carnivalistic. The message of love cannot be delivered in any other way than acting with love. But love doesn’t necessarily equal happiness; the recipe is on the one hand much more complex, and on the other real simple. I realize I am hardly the world’s first person to write about this stuff, work equaling happiness and all, but this is the first time in my life that it is happening for me, and it’s just like Uncle Karl said, so forgive my enthusiasm. I always loved my blue-collar job, too, but it never had the kind of power to make me as happy in the flow of it as my writing has. Being able to finally write has made me a happier person, and a more easy-going colleague at my day job, I think. Action is happiness. Apathy and idleness, well you know what they say about idle hands.