What's Wrong With Being Unhappy?

I read an article a couple of weeks ago that won’t stop buzzing around in my brain like an irritating housefly. I feel the urge to pick at it like a ripe scab; take it apart, exam its premise and file it under nonsense.

The article was published on the New York Times Opinionator Blog and is titled “America the Anxious.” It’s about happiness and the American obsession with finding it, having it and keeping it.

Anxiety is something I suffer from regularly and finding happiness is something I struggle with constantly, so it piqued my interest immediately.

I am forever analyzing my mood, my hormones, my general state of being. It’s exhausting, really, but staying mentally aware of what I’m thinking and feeling is the only way I have found to not live unconsciously. And to live unconsciously means to let my Ego and its merry gang of thugs (i.e. laziness, insomnia, anger, over-indulging in _anything_) be in control of my life. If there’s one thing I hate more than anxiety, it’s letting my unconscious Ego in the driver’s seat. It also makes for sh***y writing.

The article makes some valid assertions about the American obsession with finding happiness. The author, Ruth Whippman, is a British native living in the United States; California, to be exact, which might just be the mecca of hedonistic culture, with Seattle (my current city) running a close third just behind Portland, Oregon. Whippman says:

“The British are generally uncomfortable around the subject [happiness], and as a rule, don’t subscribe to the happy-ever-after. It’s not that we don’t want to be happy, it just seems somehow embarrassing to discuss it, and demeaning to chase it, like calling someone moments after a first date to ask them if they like you.”

She goes on to describe the difference between British Mommy blogs and American ones. We Americans are all like, “Hey, you’re doing a great job, we’re in this together sister, join the drum circle, kum-ba-yah!” The British Mommy blogs are packed with more “despair and feces,” with some variation of, “this is rubbish.”

My maternal grandmother was British. My grandparents met while my grandfather was stationed in England during WWII. They married, and when it was time for him to come home to a small Midwestern town in the United States, she came too; leaving behind her entire family and her known world at the impossibly young age of 19. She started a new life in a foreign land, with a man 12 years her senior whom she barely knew. She didn’t know a single soul in her new town, either. Needless to say, they didn’t have email, Skype or even the capability of frequent phone calls. I can’t help but imagine she was desperately lonely sometimes, because that’s exactly what I would have felt.

If she was, there is no tangential evidence to prove it. She didn’t talk about those things. One time I asked my grandmother if she ever got drunk and she said, “Once, on a train. I didn’t like it.” That was the end of the story. She didn’t elaborate on personal matters or stories, and certainly not with her brazen, self-absorbed, American granddaughter. She died when I was 23. For most of my life she just sat in the corner, stoically making comments on the weather and the color of things. I didn’t get her at all.

I didn’t get her because I have always been obsessed with my internal world; especially as an American, middle-class teenager, and apparently, I still am. It’s because we Americans have it so good. Most of us have warm homes, good food, loving families and enough money to fulfill our most essential needs. We have given up worrying about those things and have moved on to a preoccupation with mental and emotional fulfillment in every part of our lives. If you’re not happy all the time, then you’re not living life correctly. Whippman observes:

“Happiness in America has become the overachiever’s ultimate trophy. A vicious trump card, it outranks professional achievement and social success, family, friendship and even love. Its invocation can deftly minimize others’ achievements (“Well, I suppose she has the perfect job and a gorgeous husband, but is she really happy?”) and take the shine off our own.”

Today, current wisdom says that we need to “be in the moment.” We need to surround ourselves with daily affirmations and practice positive thinking. “Just Do It!” Take a quick glance at Facebook and you know what I mean. I’m not knocking “being present” or positivity. Those strategies, along with gratitude, have been the most effective methods to curb my perpetual, low-grade anxiety. But sometimes, they just don’t work. No matter how Zen I try to make myself, I don’t feel miraculously, instantaneously whole again. It takes time, and a lot of beating myself up and then picking myself up.

This article hints at how narcissistic the tendency of chasing perpetual happiness can be. My personal belief in taking responsibility for your own happiness and creating the life you desire is exactly why I wanted to dismiss the whole thing. Me? Narcissistic? Incapable of constant happiness? Sha-right. Watch me. (And by watch me, I mean watch me fail miserably, on this blog, in the public domain.)

But I can’t deny it. Sometimes, I am. It’s frequently about me and my current internal state of affairs and that state isn’t always pretty.

I have a self-titled blog for goodness sake, wherein two of my main topics are anxiety and fear. And still, I’m all, Hey! Look at me! I’m writing about emotional stuff! I’m so self-actualized. Yay! Me. Me. Me.

This article also bothers me on some unconscious level, because it counters my own practiced mental state of constant emotional vigilance. It looks at me sideways, like my grandmother might have done, intimating that I just need to chill-the-f-out. Stop being so self-absorbed. You’re not a failure if you feel like sh** today, Shannon. Stop wasting your time worrying about the state of your happiness and just learn to deal with what life is giving you… even if it’s rubbish.

It makes me think that maybe I’m putting too much emphasis on my vision board and “living my best life” or “finding the silver-lining.” Maybe I just need to ratchet down the pressure and take a page from my grandmother’s playbook. Sometimes the weather or the color of my new sweater is better commentary than being carried away by the direction my emotional wind is blowing.

It’s life. You make choices. They won’t always be good ones but you’ll learn to deal. Sometimes it’s rubbish. Sometimes it’s not.

And when it’s not… when the spirits are high, the hormones are level and the happiness is flowing like a quaint summer-time stream, there’s no need to fetishize that either. No need to encapsulate the good moment; hoard it, write sonnets about its every texture, taste and color, and then post it to Facebook. Maybe it is just a simple as saying I had a good day. I liked it. End of story.

Maybe that’s the kind of freedom I’m really looking for?

Shannon Lell is a fallen corporate ladder climber turned writer and stay-at-home mother living near Seattle. She writes introspective pieces on personal and social issues at Shannon Lell.