I’m not certain who first said it, but it’s been repeated a gazillion times in a billion forms.  I truly thought this chapter from Rubin might really excite me, but her spiritual master for the month is Saint Terese who, apparently, did just that.

Mrs. Rubin continues to belittle those who, her words, lazily allow unhappiness and the benefits of pity to rule them.  Now, I’ve been saying since junior high school that Happiness is a true accomplishment and misery is a cop out.  I do agree, but that’s a sweeping statement that has yet to appear in a bestseller from me so I can get away with it and bury the comment if I later change my mind. 

Shortly after high school, a friend of mine, wise in some ways, pointed out that contentment is different than happiness.  Again, I’ll say, happiness is fleeting.  If you lose your house this year, happiness might be the logical response.  Content in knowing you’ll figure out how to overcome such adversity, however, would be an honorable response. 

Gretchen claims people use pity for attention, but some of my more pitiful friends can tell you that the pity won’t last long.  You lose friends.  You lose relationships.  You lose the attention until you find someone new to listen to your woes and then, that person, too, leaves.  It’s not a good tactic and most of those people would give anything to be content if they only knew how. 

But happiness?  Sure.  They’ve attained that, too.  A great shopping experience, a fantastic orgasm, a drug-induced high, finding money on the street, getting that job interview, even laughing at a sitcom create happiness.  Fleeting.

Gretchen almost had me when she referred to her father who was cheerfully willing to pick up a pizza as soon as he walked in the door from work.  This reminded me of my grandpa, a great man.  Gretchen wondered if her dad, in comparing him to Terese who worked arduously to act and be happy, also had to “put it on,” so to speak.  I’m sorry she’d never asked before.  

I happen to know an aunt of mine, now struggling with cancer, always sees the sunnyside.  I should say, she always SHOWS the sunnyside, but she’s told me she has to work at this.  Of course.  I don’t share her faith, but I know that she finds solace and, even contentment, in her church.  I love that in her and I don’t see her as fake or delusional, as do some.  I see her as committed and determined to be a brighter light in this world.  That doesn’t mean she’s always happy doing it!

The other thing that disturbs me about this chapter is that the author claims that happiness breeds altruism.  She offers a few varying points of view on this, but this is the summation and I, personally, believe altruism breeds self-satisfaction which we, so hapless with our words, can call happiness. 

She claims there’s a group of people wandering around suffering simply because it’s more noble to suffer whilst there is suffering in the world.  People who have that CHOICE are NOT suffering.  Their martyrs who are flapping their gums in some manipulation to make their listeners feel small, which in turn, makes them feel big and, perhaps momentarily, happy.  Smug, in the least.  People who suffer the pain of the suffering, but do fulfilling work in attempting to ease that suffering ARE noble and, very likely, ALSO happy to do their part.

There’s another sweeping statement for you.  I’ll retract that later.  I can best sum this up in an observation having been a poor kid moving to a relatively upper-middle class community where kids with money suffered so much malaise and started dressing down like they were from the streets.  People who are poor don’t want to be poor. 

I have so many more thoughts on this chapter, but I’m going to lay it to rest because I don’t think this one is worth my time.  I still really like the lady for her honesty.  I have great respect for vulnerability.

On a side note, I would like people in “higher” society to realize that the starving, the illiterate, the victims of political and social tyranny live right in their backyards.  Please, don’t turn your back on your third world countries, but for crying out loud, allocate some resources elsewhere and take a closer look at the problems we keep blaming the victims for in the United States.  If we keep faking it, we’re never going to truly make it.