Happiness

The old adage, "Happiness comes through doing," seems particularly relevant for babies. The highlight of this day was when my son crawled halfway across the playground on his all-fours (up until recently he's been crawling mostly commando-style, on his belly). The proud, delighted smile on his face said it all. And yet--I just finished reading two grim apocalyptic novels, George Orwell's Animal Farm, and Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Happiness did not come through doing for the poor animals on Orwell's farm; as the character named Boxer illustrates particularly well, misery can come through doing, if the conditions in which one lives are oppressive.

On the other hand--something like happiness or maybe more accurately, a kind of moral peace comes to the father and son in McCarthy's book, simply through their efforts to survive with dignity, and to help each other. "The good guys are the ones who keep trying," the father tells his son, as they face starvation and bands of cannibalistic marauders in a post-apocalyptic landscape. McCarthy does a pretty good job of highlighting the importance of choosing in life. None of us face the morally depraved, hellish environment he describes; but we are constantly choosing--to try, or not to try. And sometimes the results of not trying can feel apocalyptic (I'm thinking here of a third novel I recently finished, Lorrie Moore's A Gate at the Stairs, which had a great message, but the characters and the unfolding of the plot were, for me, long-winded and uninteresting).

Getting back to my son. It's wonderful to see the first raw movements of a young baby, and the determination this particular baby exhibits in the face of so many obstacles, both physiological and topological. And yes, the choices he has to make are a lot less dramatic than those made by the animals on Orwell's farm, or the father and son on McCarthy's road; but they are no less impressive for all that. It certainly makes me happy just thinking about it.