High cost happiness isn’t a good deal

In our imperfect world we are all the time presented with perfect ideals and invariably told that we deserve to be happy; that happiness is our entitlement. But is it really?

Why is the pursuit of happiness such a noble quest when it comes too often at the cost of happiness to others?

Of late I heard a teenage girl say she does not recall a time when her parents lived together and to her their separation and subsequent divorce had no ill-effect on her. Her father has since remarried and she now has a young step-sister but she remains very much part of her father’s life, seeing him several times a week. She feels loved and secure. Yet she is unhappy. Her discontent rests with the fact that when she visits her father, she witnesses constant arguing between him and his second wife. It does not bother her for herself as she knows she will return to the peace and quiet of the home she shares with her mother, but she worries for her half-sister for whom there is no escape.

Then I was in conversation with a boy on the cusp of manhood who says his mother abandoned the family home when he was four years old. The relationship with his mother is non-existent and he maintains he does not have a mother. Although he articulated his thoughts well, claiming it made no difference to his existence, his body language screamed otherwise; his unhappiness palpable.

I don’t know the workings of these families I am not privy to their dynamics, stresses or their history. I just happened to happen upon conversations that made me wonder about happiness and our right to it.

I imagine that those of us who are parents want our kids to be happy. Naturally conflict seeps in when what we think will make them happy clashes with what they think will make them happy so at times no one is happy. It is the way of our imperfect world and because it is an imperfect world, everyone cannot be happy at the same time.

People who choose not to have children are often cited as selfish and self-absorbed but I disagree. I see them as people who have gauged the true magnitude of parenting and are not prepared to take on that lifelong job. Many of us fall romantically into parenting only to discover the power of that role when a baby is placed in our arms. Ironically whilst the joy of new parenthood is unparalleled, our right to happiness should be diminished somewhat only because the happiness of this new little person is now more important than our own.

But we live in an imperfect world that champions perfect ideals. The pursuit of happiness may well be a just and noble quest but it can camouflage too. Better perhaps to check before journeying too far, that our ‘entitlement’ to happiness is not coming at the cost of happiness to the very people we have brought into this very imperfect world

Thejoyes oflife WITH YVONNE JOYE