"No more, probably, than Swann himself could I succeed in knowing my own happiness . . ."
Marcel Proust, Within a Budding Grove, p. 579
What seems a simple, almost throwaway, line is, cuts right to the heart of our purpose here on this sweet old world, and why so many of us are unhappy. This observation is part of Proust's reflections on his unexpected invitation from Mme Swann to visit Gilberte's home and the intersection between dreams and reality that I covered, poorly, in my two previous posts. So, why can't we know our own happiness? If I had a mind as vast and analytical as my great friend David Kite I could doubtlessly parse this out more successfully. For instance, there is definitely a difference between knowing your own happiness and appreciating your own happiness, although they must inform each other. First off, and I'm going to have to come back to this post (as I'm going to have to with so many others) because I'm running late this morning and have more prep to do before my 8:00 class, I should ask why we don't know when we're happy (which, again, seems different than knowing what constitutes our happiness - I seem to be channeling Kite awful early this morning). I think this takes us back to Proust's previous point about the dangers of reality overlaying your dreams, and maybe our lack of happiness relates to our need to fight to keep alive our old dreams or to fashion new dreams (and I think fighting to keep old dreams alive is essentially creating new dreams). Is this the darker side of that notion? In keeping that earlier dream alive or in fashioning new dreams are we not acknowledging that our current lived reality can't measure up? Plus, I wonder if this is our egotistical need to exoticize our own lives. What we have now can't be enough, right? I remember talking to a great friend and ex-lover (who I really need to send an email to see how she's doing) about my decision to not follow life and love and career to Hong Kong and to stay in Vermont, which in my darker moments I've always, and continue to sometimes, consider cowardice on my part. She responded, and I'm paraphrasing, that coming home to a warm body every night is worth a hell of a lot. Of course, in staying I then overlaid the reality over the long-cherished dream, and we're back to Proust's point. Digging deeper, and I think this gets us closer to Kimberly's point (I'm sure she won't mind the shout out), maybe life can be simple and be OK. It doesn't have to be exotic to be amazing. I think about the absolute best relationships I've ever had - and the best moments in those relationships - and maybe what they all had in common is that they just worked, and they worked effortlessly on a daily basis, and it was better just to be in that moment and not think so damn much (said the professors, working his way through Proust).
Now, of course, thinking is an essential part of the process, and so ignore the babbling of the idiot who wrote the first paragraph. It seems to me that an essential part of identifying your happiness (as compared to just recognizing when you're happy) calls for some reflection. I've been in a couple relationships where at a certain point, and after a lot of reflection, I told the woman I really needed something. Essentially, it took the form of "you have to do this or we can't stay together" - or at the very least you have to sit down and have a very serious talk about this or we can't be together. In both instances the answer was a definitive no, and in the end that was OK. We were being honest with each other. In this case her core personal happiness didn't coincide with my core personal happiness.
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