In a tradition predicated on the perpetual pursuit of happiness, as if it have been a fugitive on the unfastened, it may be exhausting to discern what having happiness really looks like, the way it really lives in us. Willa Cather got here consummately shut in her definition of happiness as the sensation of being “dissolved into something complete and great” — a definition consonant with Iris Murdoch’s beautiful notion of unselfing. And but happiness is as a lot a matter of how we inhabit the self — how we make ourselves at residence in our personal singular lives, within the dwelling-places of our personal expertise.
That’s what May Sarton (Might 3, 1912–July 16, 1995), who has written so movingly about unhappiness and its cure, explores in her poem “The Work of Happiness,” included in her indispensable Collected Poems: 1930–1993 (public library).
THE WORK OF HAPPINESS
by Might SartonI considered happiness, how it’s woven
Out of the silence within the empty home every day
And the way it isn’t sudden and it isn’t given
However is creation itself like the expansion of a tree.
Nobody has seen it occur, however contained in the bark
One other circle is rising within the increasing ring.
Nobody has heard the basis go deeper at midnight,
However the tree is lifted by this inward work
And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.So happiness is woven out of the peace of hours
And strikes its roots deep in the home alone:
The outdated chest within the nook, cool waxed flooring,
White curtains softly and regularly blown
Because the free air strikes quietly concerning the room;
A shelf of books, a desk, and the white-washed wall —
These are the expensive acquainted gods of residence,
And right here the work of religion can finest be finished,
The rising tree is inexperienced and musical.For what’s happiness however progress in peace,
The timeless sense of time when furnishings
Has stood a life’s span in a single place,
And because the air strikes, so the outdated desires stir
The shining leaves of current happiness?
Nobody has heard thought or listened to a thoughts,
However the place folks have lived in inwardness
The air is charged with blessing and does bless;
Home windows look out on mountains and the partitions are form.
Complement with Bertrand Russell on the secret of happiness and Kurt Vonnegut on the one word it comes down to, then revisit Sarton’s poem “Meditation in Sunlight” and her magnificent ode to solitude.
