This post is a bit unfocused. There are actually several posts in this one post but I want to say some of this stuff while it is fresh in my head and no doubt will expand on various aspects of it in later posts.
I'm not a very happy person. I know, I know, for some of you this will come as a giant surprise. For others this will confirm whatever suspicions you might have been harbouring for quite some time but were too nice to openly admit to me. Whatever. After years and years of trying to appear happy I have come to the general conclusion that I am unhappy.
I don't know if this is the result of genetics or experiences or a little bit of both. Are unhappy people born this way or do they choose to become unhappy after experimenting with happiness for a while and then realizing that they are just not into it and that they are indeed unhappy? Do we just feel more 'normal' when we embrace our unhappiness despite the overwhelming 'encouragement' we feel from society to be happy?
Unhappy people get called all sort of names, to our faces and behind our backs. We get called depressed, selfish, bitchy, mean, freaks of nature, emo. We are told that we should try to see the glass half full and that if we can't, perhaps we should start a course of anti-depressants. I'm not happy that it is half full or half empty. I'm not happy that people want me to make some sort of observation about it and then judge my outlook on life based on how I answer.
Why not judge my outlook on life based on how I feel about poverty, war, culture, temptation, lonliness, government, sports, education (or lack thereof)? What I think about a glass of water....seriously!!!
Here is what I think. Happiness tends to be fleeting whereas unhappiness lasts a lot longer and you can get a lot more mileage out of it. Imagine a world where artists created art only out of their happiness. We wouldn't have any, or at least we wouldn't have great art. Unhappiness, sadness, depression, lonliness, rejection, alienation, all of these and more tend to give birth to fantastic artistic forms from painting to music.
Have you ever read "My name is Asher Lev"? If not, I suggest you read it.
Have you ever listened to Pink Floyd? If not, you should.
How about Picasso or Da Vinci or Van Gogh?
Great art produced by unhappy people. There are many, many others....
But my observations today are mostly for Christian artists.
Unhappiness with the state of the world, with the state of our lives, with the reality of sin and temptation and unanswered prayer can just as easily create great art as can heaven and angels and forgiveness and repentence and faith, all which are supposed to make us happy. Too much of what Christians pass off for art (whether in music, art, literature, drama, movies) is a trite ode to artificial happiness. The problem isn't that they are trying to be happy about this stuff, the problem is that it doesn't address the reality of life. Nobody is happy all the time. Especially not Christians. We of all people know the reality of failure, or disappointment, of longing for something we do not yet have. Yet for some reasons, we do not allow this reality to give us creative energy. Instead, we try to focus only on the happiness and create something artificial and only half true.
I guess that is why I love the desert so much. It is barren and rocky and hard and unforgiving and in many people's minds, ugly. There are no majestic snow capped mountain vistas with beautiful lakes and grass and trees. There is only heat and dust and rocks and cactus and snakes and scorpians.
Yet, in the Bible, every great character I can think of went to the desert to find God.
I think in the desert (literal and figurative) you come face to face with unhappiness and lonliness and anger and failure and ugliness and you see the reality of life. We don't live on the mountain top very often if ever. Most of us, if we are honest, live in the desert. It is just that artificially happy people try to pretend that they actually live on the mountain all the time.
I am not one of those people and I can't force myself to become one. No matter how much I want to be on the mountain all the time, I KNOW where I live. I know the reality of my life and of this world.
When I get to heaven I will be happy all the time. I will create great works of art based on the reality of true happiness because I believe that is what I will experience in heaven. Real, true, unending happiness. Two shots of happy.
In the mean time, I live down here and for the most part, what I experience is one shot of sad.
(with all appologies to Frank Sinatra and U2 for the blatant use of their song "Two shots of happy one shot of sad").
