Happiness for Fun and Profit

Curing unhappiness is simple, so don't expect anything complicated on the following pages.

First, is it true that everything is temporary? Of course. Including unhappiness? Certainly. Then it will pass away? Without any question. Positively? Oh shut up. All right; but if it passes away it must leave something in its place. Like what -- anger? Well, no. Indifference? There's no such thing as complete indifference. A vacuum? No, no, when unhappiness flies out of the window, happiness stumbles in through the door. Now the thing about it is this. Knowing for sure that everything is temporary, an unhappy person knows he will have to accept happiness again sooner or later, so he may as well accept it sooner. In fact (unless he's a dope) he may as well accept it at once. And if you're a dope you shouldn't go around reading articles.

Let's be fair, though, and scientific. There is one flaw in the above reasoning. We assumed the premise that everything is temporary. We didn't prove it. Summing up, then, the only thing standing between you, Reader, and happiness is some kind of irrefragable (look it up, isn't it a beauty?) proof that nothing really lasts.

In proving that everything is temporary we recognize, of course, that the transitory quality of material things is self-evident. Our concern then is obviously with attitudes and stuff like that. Moral attitudes? OK. Remember a thing called moral turpitude? Those two words described one of this century's most stringent attitudes, yet it found no more permanence in our society than charcoal chewing gum. Moral turpitude, in case your memory has mislaid it, meant traveling around in public on a friendly basis with someone not legally related to you. If you did that 20 years ago they threw you in the hoosegow and took away your citizenship. Today -- oh well, you read the papers. Poop used to be an awful word. So did jerk. So did another word I'd like to tell you about that was first used in public back in the Twenties. Said usage was considered to be so daring and lascivious, that the Greenwich Village Follies in which the word appeared was sold out for a solid year to people who just had to go hear it to believe it.

Its debut took place in a black-out in a one-room-apartment set, with combination kitchen, living room and bedroom furniture, and some bath fixtures in the corner by the door, stage right. The audience was carefully reminded, all through the sketch, that the maid's name was Fanny. Luella Gear was the star, I believe. She kept hollering "Fanny! Bring me a drink," "Fanny! Answer the phone," "Fanny! Turn on the light." The pay-off unfolded like this, as I remember it:

Plumber: Good afternoon, madam. Luella: Good afternoon. Are you the Plumber? Plumber (glancing at tool kit): I ain't the monkey keeper at the Bronx Zoo. (The doorman at the Capitol, Little Orphan Annie, Grover Whalen, or Morris Guest. Different answer every night.) Luella: Did you bring the sink? Plumber (glancing at sink he is carrying): Does this look to you like a grand piano? Luella: Never mind. Just install it. Fanny! Shut off the fan! Plumber: Where should I install it? Luella: Well, let's see.... Plumber: I could put it over here by the tub. Luella: No good. I couldn't reach it. Plumber: How about up here by the clock? Luella: Too high. Don't you know a person has to bend over when they wash? Plumber: Then how about right here behind the door? Luella: No good. Every time somebody opens the door I'd get a bang in the -- Fanny! Close the window!

That was some horrified gasp that went up night after night in the Winter Garden, I can tell you.

And take the biological educational film which pictorially, and in clinical detail, indoctrinates today's youth with "pregnancy, its cause and effect," starting with fourth graders, I'm told. (I mean the indoctrination starts in the fourth grade -- not pregnancy. Attitudes aren't that temporary.) Would you dare confess to the socially wise young one of today that you had to learn "the facts of life" en parable, as it were, through a bumbling five- or six-minute nature talk from father dealing with the free-home-delivery tactics of the pollen-distributing bee? Neither would I.

So all attitudes are temporary -- including the attitude you call your unhappiness. Realization of this truism must delight you. Delight is happiness. So you are now happy.

Unless you want to be stubborn and cling to some form of specialized or categorized unhappiness, like unhappiness caused by a feeling of inferiority.

For inferiority unhappiness, a never-failing remedy is to add some easily acquired fillips of information to your knowledge. Here are a few samples selected for their ease in memorizing.

There are more cats in New York City than there are people.

You heard of Goths, the ancient barbarians? You heard of Visigoths? Well, very few people know that means West Goths. Oh yes, the Goths from the East are Ostra goths.

Texas comes from the Indian word "techas" meaning "friend."

The song Lo Hear the Gentle Lark contains a reference to the warbler mounting up from his "moist cabinet." Would you believe it this means his nest? (I couldn't tell you why the silly bird built it under a drainpipe.)

Camel's-hair brushes are made out of squirrel's hair. They are only called that because they were invented by a man named Camel.

For the inferiority-unhappiness victim it is also wise to acquire a few facts generally believed to be true in reverse by almost everybody. For instance:

"Effete" doesn't mean "sophisticated" or anything like it. It means "barren."

Having learned the above pieces of information you are now smarter in some respects than almost everybody. Therefore you can't possibly feel inferior. Therefore you can't possibly be unhappy because of feeling inferior. Therefore you are now happy.

Unless you are among the few who suffer from superiority unhappines. If so, relax, please. You are comparatively easy to cure. Just keep telling yourself that most of the contributions to all the sciences and all the arts were made by superiority-complexed people. And go right on being superiority-unhappy. You will soon realize that only in that state is your specie ever truly happy.

Some people get unhappy now and then for no reason at all. If you're one of those, Reader, I have to be firm with you. You're dull. Plain dull. Only people who have no imagination can get unhappy about nothing. Before you get imagination, though, you must develop enthusiasm. The best way to do that is to pretend you're Portuguese. (If you're already Portuguese I don't believe it.) Portuguese people are always full of enthusiasm, imagination and happiness. On the few occasions when they are unhappy, you may be sure they have some good reason. Or at least a reason.

I knew a fine imagination one time in the possession of a Portuguese train butcher on the N.Y., N.H. and Hatfud who used to call out "Anywon-else? Fresh-fruit-juice-of-orange right here. Get your ice-cold fresh-fruit-juice-of-orange." He sold twice as much "juice-of-orange" as he ever would have sold "orange juice."

I remember a roadside stand doing a great business along the Portuguese Bend highway -- just because their sign left off the plurals. Catches the eye to read

"Beet -- Tomato -- Potato -- Plum -- Peach -- Apricot." I am sure you are now enthusiastic about the Portuguese and if you are enthusiastic you can't be unhappy. Therefore you are happy.

Unless you're unhappy because you can't sleep. Insomnia is something all right. I mean it's nothing to laugh at and anything you can't laugh at is apt to make you unhappy, I'll be the first to admit. I'll go so far as to say the Insom ni acly Unhappy present the first real challenge we've encountered in our discussion up to this point. (I put the italics in Insomni acly to make it pronounceable: not for you, for me -- I frequently read people to sleep.) Now then. In making any kind of clinical progress one must always hack through a jungle of superstition and age-old remedies -- counting sheep, for instance. Theoretically, this old wives' trick should work, but actually it never does for the reason that it is always a last-resort "cure" undertaken in cold anger. Under such circumstances, you make the attempt with a chip on your shoulder bound to do everything you can to prove that nothing as childishly simple as counting sheep could possibly put anybody to sleep unless he was feeble-minded. It naturally follows that the best way to prove you're not feeble-minded is to stay awake. This gives you some degree of satisfaction, but no sleep, and certainly no happiness come the dawn. (Various philters will, of course, give you sleep but they will leave you even more unhappy in the morning.)

Twisting the above sack of apples around the faucet we come into possession of the following juice.

It is not possible to monotonize yourself to sleep with childish formulae.

All right. But doesn't this suggest that it may be possible to monotonize yourself to sleep with complicated formulae? We need subdivision here and lots of it!

(1) Those who can't cook

(2) Those who can't learn the words to popular songs

(3) Those who can't ride a horse

(4) Those who can't play the bassoon

(5) Those who can't blow glass (non-glassblowers)

(6) Those who can't decorate outdoor Christmas trees. And so on. There is a categorical subdivision for every insomniac. Find yours, and work out your own complex substitute for sheep-counting. Examples follow:

(I) For those who cannot cook, try to prepare this recipe in your mind at your first sign of wakefulness:

Candlestick Salad

Find a straight banana (this search can put you to sleep for months on end).

Peel it.

Stick it upright in the middle of a pineapple ring.

Dribble mayonnaise down its side to represent candle grease.

Slap a cherry on top for a flame.

(II) For those who cannot remember words to popular songs, read over, just before turning out the light, the following well-known lyric as it is set forth here in reverse. Then try to quote it whenever you find yourself unable to "cork off."

Today ban-nan-UHS no have we

BUH-nan-as no have we........Yes!

Results are guaranteed to accrue in this order: confusion, amusement, relaxation, sleep, HAPPINESS.

Of course I will admit that a great deal of unhappiness is caused by worry. George Gallup engineered a poll one time on the subject of worry. In answer to the question "What do you worry most about?" the big reply from people of every age was "money." Well everybody knows that people seldom worry about money if they like their job, so Mr. Gallup's poll must have been telling us that most people don't like their jobs. This could be the basic flaw of the universe; a tremendous amount of unhappiness could be based on this flaw; and I would like to say this flaw doesn't sound like a very difficult flaw to repair. The thing about it is this: If only people would be as persistent trying to find their affinities as they are their allergies there wouldn't be any round pegs in square holes -- therefore there wouldn't be any unhappiness.

You say you like your job, Reader? It's only around the house that you're unhappy? One of the lucky ones, eh. Well sir, then may I say you are a lead-pipe cinch to prescribe for? Do something. That's my advice. Just do something. Something legal of course. Like pretending to lose your voice. Look here: In Merced, California, TV antennae are higher, figuratively as well as literally, than in any other place in U.S. Something to do with Yosemite next door. Hence, to locate the richest family in town find the highest antenna. I found that modest gem in the piano bench one day, on the back of a piece of music paper. I read it in amazement bordering on shock, not because of its content but because the remark was jotted down in my own handwriting. Do you recall a (continued on page 86) Happiness (continued from page 60) Paul Bunyan tale about a very cold country where any time a person spoke his words froze, spilling out of his mouth onto the pavement with a frosty clatter? Just for a moment I wondered if something like that could have happened to me a long time ago and if somehow those jotted words of mine had been thus glacially preserved in the piano bench, because I remembered the remark as part of an erstwhile casual conversation!

Now, Ellery, why would a person jot down his casual conversation?

Simple, dad: because he was temporarily unable to speak.

Yes, that was it. Some months back, after being twanged almost without interruption since childhood, my vocal cords had seemed to require a few bars' rest. For the next eight days I became, on the advice of my doctor, vocally tacit, expressing myself solely with pad and pencil. For eight fruitful days, I will quickly add, Reader. That is why I recommend this amazing experience to you. I urge it on you. Pretend you've lost your voice for a few days. You will be caught up in a life so different from any you've known that your immediate past and all its problems (including the unhappiness that has brought you and me fleetingly together) will melt quickly away! The thing about it is this: When you definitely cease speaking you suddenly become formidable. As follows: Your silence will denote thought so you will immediately begin to appear wise to others. Realizing this you will actually start feeling wise and soon you will find yourself behaving accordingly. And strong. "Strong" and "silent" go together like Zsa and Zsa.

And in replying to criticism from any member of your family -- a not infrequent cause of unhappiness -- you certainly aren't going to grab a pad and write the usual retorts: "If you think for one moment that I am going to stand here and-- --" "After slaving and slaving from morning till night it does seem that a little appreciation-- --" "Is it too much to ask-- --" Why no. All your impetus would be gone before you even got started. Your steam would have escaped before you could remember how to spell "slaving." No, instead, you will defend yourself with a look, probably a hurt look. You've now taken on a humble quality -- a humility that renders you extremely lovable, and in realizing this you will feel magnanimous all over, a condition instantly rendering you superior to any other member of your household. In a moment you will be benign. Benignancy is happiness.

When you finally get to the point of actually writing something on your pad you may be sure you will not be satisfied with ordinary kill-time remarks. Small talk, is not for the wise, the strong, the silent, the humble, the magnanimous or the benign. You will "speak" only when you have something to say, and then you will be inclined to phrase your written remarks with more care than you ever did your spoken ones, unconsciously looking for the succinct phrase instead of the long-winded.

And look here. After a few days or a week you will be able to gather up your casual conversations! You will be dumb-founded when you see how many subjects you have discussed, how one thought has given birth to another, how you skipped from idea to idea with the agility of a grasshopper at a Sunday school picnic. But above all you will realize with horror how volatile your spoken remarks have been through the years. Think of the millions of opinions, queries and rejoinders you have uttered in your life that, not written down, have fled with the wind--even views spoken only a few weeks ago of which you now haven't the remotest remembrance! Oh, you will be pleased and frightened at your swath -- known and unknown. You will feel in some unaccountable way a potential giant -- a comet -- a fireball. You may even start to write poetry if only to capture what you suspect may very well be sparks sputtering in your wake. They won't be, of course, but that's the best part of all: you becoming happily and valiantly industrious in an attempt to bloom a little through the crab grass, a process that of itself proves you to be braver than anybody, a process, therefore, wherein the less successful you are the more you contribute! "Long live the weeds," said Theodore Roethke on this very subject -- in one of the few poems since The Wonderful One Hoss Shay that I've been able to understand:

Long live the weeds that overwhelm My narrow vegetable realm!

All things unholy, marred by curse, The ugly of the universe....

With these I match my little wit And earn the right to stand or sit, Hope, love, create, or drink and die: These shape the creature that is I.

Now to quit puttering around and get our teeth in specifics.

A person may be unhappy because he has (a) just had some colossal disappointment; (b) been publicly insulted; (c) done something unbelievably stupid. Or any combination, such as (a) and (b); (a) and (c); (a) and (b) and (c), etc. Let us be content, though, for now, to take only individual possibilities.

(a) Some Colossal Disappointment

If a person has had (a), the simplest treatment is for him to hunt up someone else who has had (a), not only occasionally but if possible someone who is always having (a). Then the thing of it is for the "amateur (a)" to cure the "professional (a)" and in so doing he will cure himself at the same time.

(b) Publicly Insulted

Now if you are a person who has been (b), just consider yourself extremely lucky. Again you are allied with science and the arts. In fact, you have something in common with all the great men and women in history. Every one of the world's inventors, explorers, great political figures, doctors, lawyers, composers, sculptors, painters, poets, authors, conductors, instrumentalists, singers, actors and dancers have at one time or another been mercilessly (b) by the professional critics -- except for Dr. Schweitzer, who doesn't need to be happy. And every one of the professional critics has been equally (b) by the world's inventors, explorers, great political figures, doctors, lawyers, composers, sculptors, painters, poets, authors, conductors, instrumentalists, singers, actors and dancers -- including Albert Schweitzer. Who do you think you are to sidestep such an experience? Liberace made a career out of being (b).

(c) Something Unbelievably Stupid

If a person has done (c), the locale where he has done it will give us an important subdivision, thus:

1. in the home

Now when someone (you, of course, would never fall into such evil ways) is guilty of doing (c) sub. 1, he undoubtedly will be unhappy about it. And he will be particularly unhappy if he is a middle-aged husband in a middle-class suburban home. But we, and he as well, must face the facts of our society, to wit: Every middle-aged husband in every middle-class suburban home is guilty of doing (c) sub. 1. Ergo: All of 'em are bound to be unhappy, but at least each and every one can lessen his condition if he remembers the old adage that misery loves company, and if everyone behaves alike in the home he should be glad that he is a conformer -- glad that he's not odd or anything. So now he's glad, and if he's glad he must be happy. Good on him. Or rather he would be happy if I can convince him that he does do the same things in the home everybody else does. All right, then:

For one thing he calls his female dog a good little "girl," he tells visitors that "she doesn't know she's a dog, she thinks she's people"; he counts his gray hairs twice a day; and always gets mad every Sunday because he can find every part of the Sunday paper except just that particular section he's looking for; he gets a third degree burn the first day of vacation every summer in the same places at the same beach; he dunks when he thinks nobody's looking; he meticulously covers a yawn with pinky extended, even when he's in bed with the lights out, but he'll chew his cuticle like a cannibal looking the boss right in the eye. He firmly believes that turning the hands backward is bad for the clock; he tries to top the guest of honor's joke knowing he'll be hated for it; he talks about whichever relative doesn't happen to be present; he tells little lies about his best friends; he phones the newspaper in the middle of the night to settle arguments; puts airmail stamps on local letters; eats crackers in bed; saves theatre ticket stubs; tells the neighbors how early he has to rise and then stands in the vestibule for an hour and a half saying goodnight; could learn to speak four languages in the time he spends refilling the lighters around the house; he is pretty sure that milk and fish don't go together; he tickles ev'ry baby in the neighborhood and dutifully repeats kootchi, kootchi, kootchi; touches the floor 10 times every morning --well, five times; hunts for the morning paper under the porch daily; cancels dentist's appointments; plans to take up night-school Spanish; paints the mailbox and quits smoking tomorrow sure; brags about going to church; forgets to put film in the camera; can never find the fly swatter; reads the comics before the editorial page; argues about the light bill; misplaces the TV log out of the evening paper; lets his driver's license lapse; and, having been told that he can read the Bible in a year, one chapter a night, plans to start sometime real soon; revamps his telegrams till they make no sense in order to crowd the message into 10 words; expects to shoot good golf without ever taking a lesson; leaves his slippers in the bathroom instead of under the bed; gets burned changing the light bulbs; tries to break an apple in half every now and then without success; carries around a wallet bursting with cards and old post office receipts he doesn't even know he has; and remembers his favorite TV or radio program five minutes after it has gone off the air. He never has a pencil near the phone; can sleep through thunderstorms, but tosses and turns all night because of a gentle tap of the venetian blind three rooms away; spends 53 man-hours per summer lugging a faded old canvas chair in and out of the rain; considers that breakfast propped up on a pillow with coffee and crumbs spilling all over the bed-clothes is a rare privilege; takes unreasonable pride in his lighter's dependability; would love to wear French berets, but not having the nerve, invariably makes fun of the fellow who does; always tries to manage one extra squeeze out of an empty toothpaste tube; forgets about stopping the milk over the holiday weekend till he's 40 miles out of town; says "My how you've grown" to every kid on the block; never picks up a child without screaming "upsy-daisy"; can always think of a clever retort spiced with just the right amount of sarcasm two hours after the argument; and always -- repeat always -- finds the celery and olives in the back of the icebox after the dinner is over and the company's gone home. He firmly believes that the Ohio Match Company thought up the three-on-a-match superstition; that there are no songs like the old songs, no doughnuts like the old doughnuts, no apples like the ones he used to steal in backyards, no girls like the one that married dear old Dad; and, of course, he falls down the cellar stairs at least four times a year, once for jelly, once for potatoes, and twice for old magazines.

Now that we have convinced mister middle-aged suburban home-owner that he really is happy, we can return to you and your problems.

Of course, stretching credulity as far as it could possibly stretch, the most challenging possible case among any of you readers would be the total or jackpot combination in which the patient had simultaneously suffered (a), been (b), and has (c), with subdivision 1. It seems to me I would be forgiven were I to look upon such a monstrous possibility as a solely hypothetical one, and, skipping over it as such, consider that your problems, in the main and to the best of my ability and in accordance with my most earnest attempts to align my conscience with my titular contention on this modest article, have, therefore, been dealt with. I am checkmated in this assumption, however; checkmated for the only possible reason: I myself have been a victim of (a) + (b) + (c)!

I will try to tell you exactly what happened. No I won't either, I can't.

Reader, dear, I've enjoyed meeting you and I have had no intention of belittling your own particular kind of unhappiness. It's all very well to say Things change, It will pass, It's only your imagination, and so on. My unhappinesses are real and I know yours are too. I sincerely hope, however, that the mere circumstance of somebody publicly acknowledging those 10 foregoing words in print may be of some small succor.

And I'll remind you now, before you and I go our devious ways, that the most successful route leading away from an unhappy state of mind is Diversion -- the kind of Diversion which, in exchange for your protracted concentration, will absorb you as it challenges you. Here is a small list of suggested world problems for you to become absorbed in.

1. There is still no workable music holder for a marching piccolo player.

And above all, do not take things for granted in an attitude of defeatism. When I was a boy I took for granted that I had less stamina than my brother because I couldn't shovel snow as long as he could. Only recently have I achieved final happiness in this regard by learning I was born with inferior circulation. All I can say to you, Reader, is "Go thou and do likewise!"