What can Emile Hirsch and a discounted mocha teach us about happiness? Well, my experience this weekend has been that they can teach us an awful lot about happiness.
My sister Tara came to pick me up from SPU on Wednesday and before we set out towards my parents place I decided to get a mocha for the road. I had about two dollars left on my SPU card and it was going to cost me an extra two dollars to pay for the drink. The barista quite kindly said not to worry about it and to have a happy thanksgiving, so I walked out of the SUB with two-dollar venti mocha. Tara commented on this saying that she loves the holidays because everyone is so nice to others from Thanksgiving to right around New Year’s Eve. This comment quickly turned to discussion about this question; why cant we be this nice to people all year round? My solution is this; people are generally happier at the holidays.
Thanksgiving is sort of like the “kick-off” event that signals the commencement of the holiday season and during the holidays most everyone is happier than the rest of the year. Almost everyone has days off, great food, presents, and time with family to look forward to. Thus, “…since I am happy, everyone else should be happy too” so people try and be nice to everyone because “everyone deserves to be happy at the holidays.” This sentiment was confirmed for me on Thanksgiving.
My clan decided to take most of our leftover food (about twenty-five plates worth) and give it to the homeless in Seattle. While this may sound crass, it was like Halloween on the streets of Seattle that night. Our idea was apparently highly un-original as almost everyone we came across already had a plate loaded with food just like the ones we were handing out, which had been given to them by some other family with leftover food. Like I said, we get into this mind set that “everyone should be happy at the holidays, just like me” when the rest of the year almost of all of us can be accused of ignoring the people who are in need.
Thus I have to come to this unfortunate and highly pessimistic conclusion that I really hate, and it is this; at the holidays we are nice to people because we are happy and we feel others deserve the same. Yet for those who choose to follow God we are called to love people always not just when we are happy and it’s convenient. Now I want to get into what it means to be happy.
In the film “Into the Wild” Chris McCandless, the main character, is a bright young man who has been accepted into Harvard Law School and is well on his way to becoming a “successful” man. However, his family life has been nothing short of awful due his parents putting their business before their children, their endless arguing, and finally Chris’ discovery that his parents had lied to him his whole life and that he was actually a bastard child. And so, tired of his parents and of their forcing him to pursue success, he gives almost all of his college money ($24,500 dollars) to charity and sets out on the road hitching around the country. His goal is to simply be alone, free of any social obligations, live off the land and discover who he truly is with his final destination being the Alaskan Wilderness.
The whole time he is gone he doesn’t bother to tell his parents where he is and he hopes they don’t find out because he never wants to see them again. However, on his final stop before reaching Alaska he meets an old Catholic man named Ron who lives by himself because he has no family. As Chris gets to know Ron better he begins to challenge him and shows Ron that he has no life beyond the comfort of his own home. Shortly after pointing this out, Chris challenges Ron to climb a big hill with him, which he had refused to do earlier in the movie. Ron climbs and reaches the top of the hill, much to the joy of both of them. As Chris and Ron sit on the hill together Chris explains to Ron that he feels the principle joy of life isn’t found in human relationships but in the world all around us, to which Ron responds, “…there is some kind of bigger thing we can all appreciate, and it sounds like you don’t mind calling it God, but when you forgive [for example his parents] you love, and when you love God’s light shines on you.” Right after this the sun peaks out from the clouds and Chris exclaims “Holy S**t!”
Towards the end of the film as Chris is alone, highly emaciated and dying in the Alaskan Wilderness, he realizes that the only thing that can save him is medicine, in other words the society that he tried so hard to be rid of. Just before lying down on his deathbed, he reads in a book (I think one by Tolstoy) that a man could want little more in life than music, books, a quiet country life and a family to share it with. After reading this he writes his last words, “Happiness only real when shared.” This demonstrates his final epiphany that happiness does not lie in society at all (which he knew all along) nor does it lie solely in relationships or solely in nature, instead happiness lies in experiencing the joys of this world with the ones we love.
The bigger picture that I am trying to get at with all of this is that we can be happy and show love (be nice) always. We are a people called to show the world we love them because God loves us and we know the power of love (just like the Huey Lewis song). As were trucking through the mountains and especially the valleys of this life, God asks that we shine his light and his love even when we are covered in mud and we don’t know how. We can be happy people in the midst of tragedy when we embrace that there is good in everything not just in presents and turkey. We can show love even when we don’t feel like it, because we know that we have perfect love on our side. Finally, when we live in happiness and love, we live the life God intended for us. When we do this we can be living proof that God is good and that the only reason people don’t like him is that we have misrepresented him.
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