Six years ago, Chris Reeves set out from Australia looking for happiness. Chris happens to be related to my prankster friend Barney by marriage. “Make it clear when you write, that it is not Chris and I who are married, but that I have a wife and it is to her that he is related, being her cousin,” he instructed, adding, “These are changing times and the vocabulary for ‘marriage’ is shifting considerably to encompass a wider range of the target population, so be specific.”
The ‘target population’ term, for some reason makes me think of a nation of archers and I’m reminded of the remarks of a witty television commentator recently after the entire nation had witnessed a streaker run across the pitch and disrupt a game of football at a pivotal moment. Situations like this usually start out amusing and rapidly escalate to hilarious because television cameramen are not prepared for such an eventuality. Their response is usually what is called ‘arthritic knee jerk’.
Anyway, amidst all the laughter, the commentator was heard saying that archery was possibly the only sport where a streaker would be least likely to disrupt the progress of play. Stopping a ball is one thing; intercepting an arrow quite another.
Anyway, Barney’s cousin Chris, apparently tired of the growing materialism around him, decided to head off in search of happiness elsewhere. On foreign shores.
“He was last heard of traipsing through Sumatra,” said Barney, who confided that given the chance, he’d contemplate something similar. He found the concept ‘stimulating’, he added. “Except, I’m very happy where I am,” he says quickly, glancing across at his wife who is seated at another distant table with her girl friends, sipping coffee and catching up on what the other girls have been up to.
“Fancy going off on your own personal journey in search of something abstract,” says Barney, which causes Ryan, our mutual teacher friend, to emit a scoff that he’d probably been suppressing for a while. Ryan’s the thinker and Barney’s been heard to refer to him sarcastically as Socrates, behind his back.
“Chris hasn’t found happiness yet, we might assume, Barney?” asks Ryan.
“No, but that’s what he’s after. It’s all about the quest, isn’t it?” Barney replies.
“He probably never will.”
“Oh, don’t be negative, Ryan.”
“It’s only that happiness is not some product you can go out and buy, Barney.”
Barney lets out a ‘here-we-go-again’ sigh. Ryan, we can tell, is hopping up on his soap box. It is lecture time! Barney’s leg nudges mine under the table, not very surreptitiously. Not that it puts Ryan off.
“Let’s take an example, okay? Suppose Barney you tell me you find happiness collecting music CDs. That doesn’t mean that I will find happiness if I, too, go out and start buying CDs. You get pleasure from collecting CDs but that’s not the process that explains why you collect them. You don’t say to yourself, ‘I must buy CDs so I can be happy.’ You like collecting CDs and your happiness from this is got indirectly.”
“Thank you for mixing my brains up,” offers Barney.
“It’s a fact, mate. It’s the Paradox of Hedonism. Pleasure or happiness cannot be got directly, only indirectly. Running away to another country, chasing after it is not going to help. You have to immerse yourself in something you like and enjoy doing and happiness will come out of that. It is a byproduct. A quote attributed to William Bennett goes: Happiness is like a cat. If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you; it will never come. But if you pay no attention to it, if you go about your business, you will find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap.”
Two days later, Barney shows me a page on the internet. “Ryan knows his Wiki, mate. I’ll grant him his phenomenal memory.” A lot of Ryan’s arguments, including the quote, are on that page.
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
