"What the hell is happiness anyhow?"

Marie is being confounded by philosophy.

You remember that last month she agreed to receive formal transmission of the Five Mindfulness Trainings. Since then she has been thinking about them regularly, which is good. (Surely that must be one of the points of receiving them formally, no?) At the same time she's had a routine share of bad luck, including a trip-and-fall accident at her work that banged up her knee. And of course she joined me at the Schmidts' farm a couple weeks ago, to help with Ma Schmidt's decline.

Yesterday she wrote me an email that ran, in part:

I am in a little pain today from my knee (I didn't elevate it last night, and apparently I still should have!), and yesterday it really hit me how sad I am that Ma Schmidt is dying. Oh, and the sweet potatoes I put in the soup I made for lunch today aren't very sweet, so the balance of flavors is off a bit.  Whine, whine, there's always something!

So, I am thinking of the Second Mindfulness Training, the part that goes "I am aware that happiness depends on my mental attitude and not on external conditions, and that I can live happily in the present moment simply by remembering that I already have more than enough conditions to be happy."

I'm going, ok, so I can be happy while being sad at losing Ma Schmidt, and while experiencing pain, and.... um, what the hell is happiness anyhow?

Yes, exactly.*

I replied:

You talk about whether you can be happy while losing Ma Schmidt, and I remember while we were there she would regularly say (trying for sarcasm), "Gosh, this must be a great vacation for you, looking after your buddy's old sick mother!" When she said that I'd always try to say something reassuring, but I never told her what I was really thinking. What I really thought, as a reply, was, "Yes, actually it is. Not in the sense that it is FUN, exactly. But I can't think of anywhere else I would rather be, under the circumstances." (And of course I never said that out loud because it just didn't sound like the kind of thing you can say out loud.)

Does that mean I was "happy"? Or does it mean that the vocabulary of happiness is too small, and is missing a few dimensions? I vote for the latter choice, and maybe that option works for you too.

And actually she agreed:

Yes on the "nowhere I'd rather be."  If someone I love is dying, I want to be there; and if someone else I love is overwhelmed because their mother is dying, I want to help.  But you're right, that's hard to say.

Yes happiness may need some redefining.  I am thinking of water again, the surface and the depths.

__________

* There's actually a long philosophical discussion of exactly this question. Epicurus maintained that the wise man could be happy, even on the rack. Aristotle, for his part, said this is nonsense. (Nic. Eth., book VII, chapter 13, Bekker page 1153b.)