Saturday, April 9, 2011

On smiling, happiness and dignity

I have recently reaffirmed my commitment to smiling less. Maybe I am always reaffirming that commitment when it occurs to me, but I was thinking about it in relation to a few things recently.

Last Saturday K and I went to see LHO's Candide, and not only was it a fantastic production (singing, acting, set, orchestra, supertitles, were all right on), the opera itself (or "operetta," perhaps) is quite a moving and fantastic piece of art. Credit is perhaps foremost due to old Voltaire, who wrote the original story of Candide. But its power would have been significantly less without the brilliantly clever and articulate rhymes of Richard Wilbur (and a number of other collaborators, as well, apparently) and the stunning composition of Leonard Bernstein. I was particularly fascinated with the music
(since I have some personal interest in composing) and how he managed to convey so many diverse worlds, moods, events and ideas with his varying choices of orchestration, tonal/atonal language, pastiche, and of course all the other things that composers vary, dynamics and tempi and all that.

The most moving and memorable scene for me was at the end, when the singers came together to sing the most tender, introspective chorus, like a halting hymn, and a cappella, after the orchestra had played continuously for the vast majority of the opera. They reflected on their experiences, the errors of their previous dogmatic worldviews, and humbly, Zen-like, declared that "life is neither good nor bad"; and, looking forward, as Candide threw on his farmer's hat, they vowed to work the land, make do with what they have, and to keep their hope.

It was such a Zen or Zhuangzian kind of ending (those are what I associate it with, anyway), admitting that we can't know anything, and stopping insisting that things be a certain, definable, generalizable way. The characters in the opera started off insisting that they lived in the "best of all possible worlds," since it was the "only world," and in it everyone was good and kind and happy. Then, when battle struck and death, pain and weakness became undeniable realities, nihilistic pessimism reigned, and at one of the characters declared that "absurd" was the only word that could describe the world.

Anyway, the conclusion that they came to at the end (and the beautiful words, music, and even acting, through which it was conveyed) was on my mind for several days afterwards, and I felt myself in quite a peaceful, natural state of mind similar to what I imagine the characters of the opera were supposed to arrive at. I also imagined it to resemble that state of being so praised in the Lao-tzi, and hinted at by Zhuangzi, in which one does not think, does not label or generalize, and does not "be" any defined moral or immoral way; one rather just flows naturally, like water, and like the other animals who are not so self-conscious or philosophical.

It was a rather silent state, which is also why I said "Zen" earlier, like the state I sometimes achieve for bits of time when I meditate, and which I usually consider to be the goal in silent meditation. Yet by silent I don't mean still; I was going about various tasks of my life, experiencing various feelings and sensations, and was certainly driven by some energy to keep doing things that involved moving and even thinking -- but practical, honest thinking, not judgmental or presumptuous thinking.

Reflecting on that "flowing" state, I noticed that it often does not involve smiling or looking "happy". Smiling, as I mentioned, has been an interesting issue to me for some time, because I often feel that I smile too much, and that some of my impulses to smile are rooted in nervousness, a desire to please people superficially, and concerns that I will give off the wrong impression if I do not smile --i.e., people will think I am not "happy". I regard this issue of smiling as a problem because not only does it cause me discomfort (a smile can be painful to maintain, after awhile, and feels quite unpleasant when it stems from the causes I just mentioned), but it also constitutes a restriction of my freedom: I feel obligated to smile even when a part of my fervently wishes to let my expressions be free from such constraints, and even when I know that the smiling is only diminishing others' respect for me (as well as my self-respect).

Until recently, part of the problem I encountered was that I did not want to appear to be an unhappy, ungrateful person full of turmoil, because I felt that would suggest I was ignorant and somewhat crazy (my life is so fortunate, when have I ever been justifiably unhappy?). Of course, to begin with, I no longer think that any person in however fortunate of circumstances ought to feel happy all the time, and never have any turmoil. So one helpful realization is just that feeling unhappy despite "good" circumstances needs no justification, and does not imply insanity.

But more recently I have questioned what people (myself included) actually mean when they use the word "happy". I think I was first prompted by K, in a very interesting conversation we had a few weeks ago about "happiness," in which she said that as a child she was quite skeptical of people's great interest in being "happy," and that she personally was not interested in being happy. She would wonder why people strive to be happy over other goals, like reading a lot, or being really virtuous, for example.

When she first said all this I was quite skeptical myself, thinking it was probably early inculcation by her parents or culture that convinced her that it was "selfish" and useless to seek one's own happiness, and that one should instead care for others and diligently pursue knowledge and other useful, altruistic things.

But I kept her words in mind, and I think I've finally begun to understand what she meant.

Current English language norms have helped people to conflate "happiness" and "happiness" (understandably). By the first "happiness," I mean the passing mood that often evokes genuine smiling, and/or light fluttering in the solar plexus. By the second "happiness" I mean the kind of state I was describing earlier, in which I was experiencing life quite directly, focused on my tasks or observations without the often diluting and confounding mediation of language, labels and rumination.

This second form of happiness, which I suppose might be called "contentment," (although I have developed a [probably incorrect] association of "contentment" with complacency and a might-as-well-be-dead kind of state), seems very similar to "flow" as described in my positive psychology class. The term "flow" also came up in my conversation with K, and she definitely felt it related to the experience that she was talking about from her childhood.

Contemplating my own experiences of flow and contentment, of rich, clear and engaged experience of life's sensations and activities, has brought me to another thought about smiling and "happiness". First of all, I've realized that many of my favorite, most enjoyable activities are not ones during which I am particularly inclined to smile.

I thought about this during the Tallis Scholars concert last weekend, as I listened to their impeccable, resonant tuning, beautiful sonorities and composition that they must have been deeply enjoying (at least for a good while...I personally started sleeping in the second half), I noticed that their faces did not show particular stereotypical signs of happiness or enjoyment - they certainly were not smiling. And as I mused about how much I would love to sing Renaissance music all the time with a small group of people, and improvise polyphony (like we did at EAMA that one night on the Seine), I recalled how much I had enjoyed singing with Canto Armonico last fall, and how after our concert my dad asked me, "did you enjoy it?" And I assured him that I did, thoroughly, to which he replied that I didn't particularly look like I was enjoying myself while singing. He said that the other singers were bright-eyed and smiling (obeying Simon's entreaties to put on a "show" for the audience, and not make the mistake of the Tallis Scholars, who despite their musicianship tend to bore audiences, he said), while I...was not.

The more I've thought about smiling with regard to things I enjoy, the more I realize how much of what I enjoy does not involve smiling. And, further, I have noticed there is a definite enjoyment to be found in not smiling, and in feeling correspondingly "unhappy," yet content, relishing another of life's variety of feelings. 

For example, this past Monday morning I took the shuttle to poster before prayers, and when I got off, feeling still a bit new to the day -- not sleepy per se, but my body was still waking up in the cool, damp gray day -- I sighed a big and luxurious sigh as I waited unsmilingly for the crosswalk light to change, mildly conscious that my appearance probably did not make obvious how deeply I was relishing my morning. A moment later, I was greeted by N, who made some comment about how I didn't look happy, and continued, "aren't you about to go sing and be all happy and chipper?" or something to that effect, "you look like you hate the world," he finished. The latter bit he had said to me on another occasion as well, when I was a bit tired at dinner one day, so it seems to be a thing of his, but in any case I took it as quite an achievement for myself, since I had sufficiently exercised my freedom of bodily expression to project an image that he found so thoroughly "unhappy" looking.

I won't expand much on the "dignity" bit of this post's title, since I'm sure you can imagine how it fits in, but basically I've been thinking that dignity has to do with being true to your ideals, goals, principles, and nature, and not sacrificing those things for the sake of inferior interests of your own or others. So in relation to smiling, I'm pretty sure I care more about expressing myself freely and honestly than about fulfilling an imagined obligation to smile for the sake of my image, or for the protection of the other person's ego (which is another very frequent motivation for my smiling obligation that I forgot to mention before).

I think that such "being true" also relates to "contentment," and in fact they might go hand in hand.

When I have space, physically, sonically, mentally, to tune into myself and my nature (at which times I probably feel content), I am infinitely more motivated and able to be true to my nature and to pursue what I really care about. When I do that, I experience (and presumably project) more dignity, which in turn seems to breed further contentment and clarity.

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