Every morning after I walk my dog, the homeless guy who hangs out next door nods to me in greeting.
"Hey," I always say in return. "How are you today?"
"I am blessed," he says.
And every day I think about that. I think: Can saying it make it so?
The new trend in psychology right now is happiness studies, or positive psychology. Some practitioners believe that happiness can be taught�to prove it, they've started teaching classes to undergraduates at Harvard and other places. The idea is that wellbeing is the capstone of certain building blocks: optimism, gratitude, mindfulness, hope, spirituality, generosity, absorption in work or play. You can refine your happiness skills. You can exercise them, like muscles.
This might be a problem for gays and lesbians, where sunniness is not, on the whole, encouraged. We like sarcasm. We like doomsday. We like drama. We worry that contentment equals complacent, and complacent ain't never got anyone no rights.
Anger is what leads to change. Frustration is what propels movements forward. Sarcasm is what gets you through the tough times that come when you're seen as a packet of "special rights" instead of a person.
It's better to be an unhappy Socrates than a happy pig, said philosopher John Stuart Mill, more or less.
Mill wasn't gay (He had a smart, feminist wife) but many of us wind up agreeing with him. A sunny, hopeful optimist is either going to get his ass kicked outside the local gay bar one night or his ass kicked on the courthouse steps by the religious right one day. We'd rather be smart. We'd rather be wary. We'd rather be bitter.
Despite what we call ourselves, "gay" is the last thing we are.
We're a creative people, gays and lesbians, and creativity stems from our outsider status, from loneliness, from rage and despair (think Van Gogh). We have camp and drag because we like to try on other characters for a while. We like to see what it would be like to not be us. If we're going to smile, smile, smile, than we'd rather do it in heels and glitter, or a fake beard.
And yet.
And yet the world is changing. We don't have to be as much on our guard any more. We don't have to wear our martyrdom like a glamorous coat.
We've already got embedded in our community one happiness key: doing good. It seems that seeking pleasure only places us on a hedonistic treadmill (oh, don't we know it). Drugs, sex, shopping, chocolate, smoking, drinking--these things give our senses a burst of pleasure that never translates into full wellbeing. To keep the feeling of "happiness," we must up the ante. Another hit; another, perhaps more dangerous partner; the entire menu at chocolatier Max Brenner.
We forget, I think, what in the 1980s we knew so well. Our community is strengthened by how well we care for one another. By meals we bring friends when they're sick. By groceries we shop for when someone we know is homebound. By stands we take when we're faced down by the sharp-toothed tigers of inequality.
Sometimes it seems that gay and lesbian service has stuttered to an almost-stop; that it's become enough to pay $200 to attend a glittering ball or four, and say you've done your community duty. It's enough to write a check. It's enough to nod in agreement when political leaders on television mouth our words.
But it's not enough. It's good �our organizations need money and we need to keep supporting them. But in addition to cash, we need to give them time. We need to give time to organizations and to our friends and to all those who really need our help, our kindness, our skills, our gratitude.
Writing a check just doesn't give us the same glow of wellbeing as mentoring your local, truculent teenager. It doesn't feel as good as buying your local homeless guy a meal. It doesn't lighten your heart like visiting AIDS or cancer patients in the hospital, or painting a school, or doing errands for your elderly gay neighbor who can, in turn, share with you his great stories of his younger days.
In order to give to others, though, it helps for us to realize how truly lucky we are, no matter what our situation in life is. It helps to stretch our gratitude, work out our mindfulness, do multiple reps of hope.
Even the most catty gay man, the most depressed lesbian, can, in fact be happy. We can, in fact, learn happiness.
The question now is: Do we want to?
10 Comments for “C’mon—Get Happy”
posted by Casey on
Lovely article, and a worthy challenge. Thanks to the author.
posted by BJ on
lesbians, bi and large, are not creative. Anger, resentment toward men stunts their creativity. Gay men dwarf them in their accomplishments.
posted by James Sherman on
Although the artical is interesting, it is chock full of stereotypes “…problem for gays and lesbians, where sunniness is not, on the whole, encouraged. We like sarcasm. We like doomsday” is one, or generalisations like ” We’re a creative people, gays and lesbians, and creativity stems from our outsider status, from loneliness, from rage and despair”. We are a people as deverse as any random sample of people on this planet. I use the words “random sample” because I believe that prevailence of gay people happens within the same proportions as the Bell Curve. one half of one third as 100% straight. one half of one third is 100% gay and two thirds fall somewhere in the middle. So needless to say some generalisations are impossible to say. There are happy gay, sad gay, outraged gay and contented gays, open gays and private gays. Using the Bell Curve concept I would think that being gay is mostly a population control for Man. Since we have no natural enemies besides ourselves. Imagine, using the “curve”, if 16.5% of the population of China that was 100% gay was allowed to live in the open and for the 2/3% in the middle, some were able to choice the option of a gay lifestyle as equally as a straight lifestyle would they have such a population problem? Sorry for getting a little of subject, but you don’t give a place for a seperate post. James Sherman beyondhiv.org
posted by Casey on
Oh yeah, BJ, lesbians are so very lacking in creativity. Take a walk through any decent bookstore and check the names of the great women poets of the modern era – bunch of them are ours. Hell, look at musicians! We have our own talents, thank you. I’ve often wondered if there wasn’t a correlation between gay men’s specialization in the visual arts (theatre, fashion) and the male tendancy to base its attractions on physical appearance. Appropriately, women being more verbal creatures (in general – yes, there are exceptions all over the place to both estimations) lesbians specializing in lyrical forms of expression may not be that surprising. Of course, given that divide, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised at your ignorance – you’re only male, after all.
posted by raig2 on
BJ:
Sappho? Colette? Susan Sontag?
Sorry, what was that about inferior creative capacities again?
Craig2
Wellington, New Zealand
posted by BJ on
I’m not ignorant. I;m echoing what Camille Paglia(a lesbian) has said on numerous occasions.
Lesbians do NOT match our cultural output. Look what we’ve achieved and you haven’t. Tchaikovsky, Henry James, Oscar Wilde, Halston.. I could go on.
Sure there are lesbian authors, but all but a few of them have made a mark on the world. Paglia writes she would often talk to a stray gay in lesbian bar. There she found taste, opinions, wit -something completely lacking in the sorority sisters around her.
posted by Casey on
Please, I beg you – do not judge lesbian wit and creativity by what can be found in your typical academic feminist organization (particularly not those of yesteryear, during the age of “womens’ lib”). A more joyless, militantly conformist (to their so-called “radicalism”) and patently unoriginal environment can hardly be conceived. Hell, I don’t want to hang out in that environment – though I will note that the wit and taste Paglia found was in those gays who forsook the male-only space to visit a lesbian bar. Wonder what they were seeking there? Like minds?
posted by Casey on
Further, much as I hesitate to play this card, when you’re reaching back into the past to guage “culural contribution” levels, there is the factor that women simply didn’t receive due recognition for their greatness, and only rarely the training or opportunities to advance their talents. One really does have to wonder how many times “anonymous” was a woman.
posted by John on
I’m not too happy after reading an article blithely sprinkled with stereotypes. It’s one of the frustrations of being gay for me – the denial of our individuality as a result of whom we love and it’s always especially annoying when it comes from another gay person. Try making any such generalizations about heterosexuals and the absurdity of it should make you realize the extent you have internalized our society’s endless need to stereotype us. By the way, camp does not represent a desire to try on other characters. It’s an attempt by gay men to mock a society that has so shamed them they dare not confront it directly. It’s an ugly product of psychological assault.
posted by John on
Really a sickening piece on second reading. Lucky for the author she never met the 55 year-old homeless women diagnosed with cancer that I met in San Francisco who had no family to turn to and no hope of adequate medical care. She was scared and wasn’t telling anyone she was blessed. What a loser she was. Is this why red America hates liberals?