The loss of joy
Are we teaching our children the importance of finding happiness in everyday life?
Those who prefer their principles over their happiness, they refuse to be happy outside the conditions they seem to have attached to their happiness. If they are happy by surprise, they find themselves disabled, unhappy to be deprived of their unhappiness."
— Albert Camus, "Notebooks 1951-1959"
Some 41 years ago, my younger brother’s Boy Scout troop had a group outing to a Padres ballgame at the old Jack Murphy Stadium. Since my dad was on a business trip overseas, my mom had gotten me to sign up as an adult volunteer - and so there we were on a beautiful summer afternoon, a couple dozen Boy Scouts and their families among the thousands of other Padres fans.
We were in the upper deck, the nose-bleed seats, but the boys were having a good time and I was enjoying the game. About 4 or 5 innings into the game, there was some commotion going on a couple sections over to our left. It was hard to figure out what was going on at first, but then it slowly dawned on us that a couple of young women, likely under the influence of too many ballpark beers, were flashing the crowd.
One of the moms in our troop was absolutely aghast at this, and in her urgent desire to get the ushers to put a stop to this behavior, turned and yelled to no one in particular, at the top of her lungs, “Make them stop! They’re ... they’re ... “ and here she was sputtering in rage: “THEY’RE HAVING FUN!”
In her anger, she’d inadvertently blurted out what truly upset her: People were having fun of a sort of which she did not approve.
I still think of that day from time to time, and of late I wonder what that mom thinks of today’s descent into domestic divisiveness - when having fun, or experiencing joy, seem to be forbidden?
Our culture is increasingly one in which happiness is viewed not only with suspicion, but often with hostility. There is little joy in our modern public discourse; the approved public emotions of our time seem to range from scowling disapproval to contemptuous mockery to wholesale rage and hatred.
Not since the English Civil War, when the puritans found themselves in charge, have we seen such pushback against any semblance of joy or happiness. We are told that as long as anyone anywhere in the world (or, conceivably, other worlds), is suffering, that none of the rest of us has any right to experience anything positive – that to be happy in the face of others’ suffering is to actually to take on responsibility for inflicting said suffering.
By that standard, though, happiness and joy can never be allowed.
Who on earth put Debbie Downer in charge of the whole darn world?
A constant stage of alertness, a never-ending call to arms is, frankly, exhausting - physically as well as emotionally.
While life is often unfair, and everyone experiences hard times, what has always made hardships bearable - beyond a faith in something greater, another item that is looked at even more suspiciously than joy among our sophisticates - are the respites provided by personal and social celebrations large and small.
It is no accident that our ancestors created celebrations to mark both special and regular occurrences in life, to carve out time for joy in what could be bleak efforts to scrape out a living from the land. Birthdays, weddings, changes of seasons - every culture created its own calendar of celebrations.
I worry most for children growing up in the United States today, who may not be getting a balanced perspective on how to live life from the adults they look to for guidance, and certainly not from the popular media.
Yes, working to improve the lives of those who suffer is and always will be important - but, no, that work will never be done. Unfairness is built into the fabric of our existence - and while we’re called to work to improve that, we are also called to not let it overwhelm us.
Folk singer Pete Seeger took the third chapter of the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament and turned it into a song, “Turn, Turn, Turn” - which The Byrds made into a hit in 1965:
To everything - turn, turn, turn
There is a season - turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under heaven
A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep
It is not only important to remember that we need times to celebrate, especially when our social fractures seem so insolvable, but that we remember to celebrate together with those we might view as our opponents, lest they become enemies.
It is important to lay our burdens down from time to time, to laugh, to smile, to have that extra slice of cake. To recharge our spirits, to remind ourselves of the happiness that is the proper birthright of all, and can only be given to others by sharing from our own well of joy.
After all, when we look at those in history who often did the most to help alleviate the suffering of others, they tended to be joyful people.
Let’s be honest: Few crises have ever been solved by Mr. Grumpy Pants.
I had a short vintage tech item that Joanna Stern included her in her weekly Tech Things email column from the Wall Street Journal - scroll down to the last item.
Abbey Lincoln, “Do Nothing ‘Til You Hear From Me”
Covid knocked me on my butt a couple weeks ago, and I’m still playing catch-up, so this week’s Break out the Headphones is abbreviated.
Abbey Lincoln was born in 1930, and while she grew up during the Swing Era, she was too young to be part of the Big Bands during their heyday. Her first album, was only issued in 1957, issuing new albums every year for the next four years before a lengthy recording hiatus as leader.
That debut, though, was a stunner. Arranger and bandleader Benny Carter puts her in front of a big band, and frames her crystalline vocals with multi-layered horn choruses that remind of nothing so much as Duke Ellington’s arrangements for his vocalists.
Ironically, interestingly, whatever the right adverb is, this track was not even released on her debut! It was only in 1995 that Esquire Magazine issued it on a CD sampler titled “The Voice of the Soul” (and it’s also included on the CD reissue of her debut that came out in 2011).
“Five Came Back,” by Mark Harris
Published in 2014, and subsequently turned into a miniseries on Netflix, Mark Harris’ tale follows five Hollywood directors who joined the military to help tell the story of America’s fight against the Axis powers in World War II: Frank Capra, John Ford, John Huston, George Stevens, and William Wyler.
Huston had the least to lose in walking away from Hollywood to join the military, having only directed three films (including his first, “The Maltese Falcon,” that had established him as a director on the rise) by the time Pearl Harbor happened. The other four were bonafide stars in their own right - at the time, as famous and respected as Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood or Spike Lee are today.
Harris uses personal correspondence, government archives, contemporary news accounts, and more to piece together each man’s journey from civilian to quasi-military. (None of these men were required to go through basic training; a quick orientation to get them familiar with military protocols, and they were off to work with an officer’s commission.)
All but Capra would see combat, or at least get very close to it - Ford taking a piece of shrapnel while personally filming the Japanese attack on the island of Midway. But as Harris tells it, Capra was able to work his Tinseltown connections to make sure the military got the cinemegraphic equipment and talent it needed to both produce training films for the tens of millions of American civilians entering the military, as well as pro-Allied propaganda films to help keep the home front’s spirits up. Capra may have resented his deskbound job, but he may also have done the most to make sure the American people understood the war.
Their work dramatically influenced filmmaking as an art: Ford’s shakey, hand-held camera while filming battle scenes during Midway was widely adopted as a technique to lend films about war an added layer of authenticity, even when filmed safely on a sound stage; while Wyler’s use of fixed cameras on P-47 fighters to account for the lack of space for a cameraman opened up new possibilities for filming aviation. In addition, Wyler’s willingness to cast a double-amputee veteran in “The Best Years of Our Lives” was the kind of brutally honest look at the costs of the war on the young men we sent to fight it that hadn’t been seen before.
But the men themselves were changed more.
Ford’s anger at his formerly favorite leading man, John Wayne, for refusing to serve in the military during the way forever strained their relationship.
Capra would only direct six more films following the war, and only “It’s A Wonderful Life” is held among his stronger works. In Harris’ telling, Capra was a victim of self-doubt - and the military’s refusal to deploy him to a combat zone, instead utilizing him as a virtual producer of all the military’s war films from a desk in Washington, only fed into his fears.
Wyler, although younger than Ford or Capra, had the second-deepest filmography at the war’s start - having, like both men, started out directing silent films. And yet, despite having helmed some highly regarded pre-war films including “Wuthering Heights,” “Jezebel,” “The Little Foxes” and the pro-intervention (and Oscar-winning) “Mrs. Miniver,” it was his post-war work that garnered him even greater acclaim, as he won Oscars for “The Best Years of Our Lives” and “Ben-Hur.” But the two documentaries he produced for the government helped bring Hollywood production values to what had been the province of the newsreels. For “The Memphis Belle,” Wyler and his cameramen flew combat missions over Germany with a bomber crew, filming the waves of Luftwaffe fighter attacks on the bomber formations as they happened. As mentioned, for “Thunderbolt!” - which followed a squadron of U.S. fighters based in Corsica as they flew ground attack missions over Italy - Wyler devised methods of mounting cameras at different points on a P-47, and automatically triggering them when the pilot fired his weapons. Both films brought the war to stateside audiences in a visceral way they had never previously experienced.
Huston was first assigned to the Aleutian Islands near Alaska, to document efforts to expel Japanese forces from American territory. But it was his attempt to document how the military treated those suffering from combat fatigue - what we today call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - that was his most frustrating assignment. The resulting film, “Let There Be Light,” while widely hailed today for its humane depiction of the psychological stress of combat, was censored by the government and not made available for public viewing until 1981. And Huston, of course, went on to have the most productive post-war career of any of the Hollywood directors who joined up (being the youngest didn’t hurt, of course). The anti-establishment tone of his career was likely shaped by the constant battles he waged against the bureaucracy while in the service.
But it was Stevens who was most affected by the war - not least because of his role in documenting the concentration camps the Allies liberated from the Nazis in the closing months of the war. After filming the D-Day landings and the liberation of Paris, Stevens and his cameramen made it their mission to document as fully as possible the depravities the Americans found in the death camps. His footage was used as the basis for the Nuremberg trials after the war - an experience that obviously scarred him. He would make some notable films after the war, including Oscar-winning “Giant” with James Dean, but Harris documents that family and friends noted he could never escape the horrors he’d witnessed.
It is likely no one could.
Harris is a gifted writer, with a strong feel for narrative flow. A streak of anti-Catholic bigotry sneaks in now and again, but this is otherwise a superb history of a time that some of Hollywood’s most talented, rich and powerful directors put their lives on hold to join tens of millions of other Americans to serve their nation during a time of need.
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The loss of joy
Perhaps because we are not quite connected to the wider culture (no TV, don't read people or bot's nasty posts), I did not perceive this abhorrence of joy and happiness. At least in Encinitas, where kids are fairly privileged, I noticed the one silver lining to covid: kids, freed from organized activities that was shut down during Covid and newly armed with electric bikes, are now seen going around in independent groups living like they are 1970s/1980s kids. Happiness is related to having play time (do silly things), time to connect with family and friends, time to do work meaningful to self, time to gift something to this world. Happiness is being able to slow down to notice and marvel at small things like dandelions, the mockingbird singing his song at 2 am, ice cream, coffee, chocolate.... so many things to be happy about. There are sad things too. But human survival depends on our ability to find humor and joy even when things are bleak.
I agree. My daughter seems to have the burden of guilt on her whenever she thinks about having fun. We are all here for such a short time and no, we can't end the suffering in the world. There is just too much of it. But yes. I will say that the new Elvis movie and the Top Gun movie are pure fun.