Had you walked up to me when I was 8 years old and asked what made me happy, I could have given you a quick, unambiguous list: my dog Hero; Superman comic books; football; basketball; ice cream; science fiction; and my grandfather’s key ring (which was, by virtue of his ownership of several warehouses, a massive jumble of dangling metal, spookily cool to the touch).
My list would look somewhat different today, and not just because Hero long ago moved on to his heavenly reward. As people grow up, their ideas about happiness change. Is the same true of nations?
DePaul University’s American Studies program recently launched an extended investigation of happiness, that elusive entity we were given license to pursue in one of the country’s founding documents. It’s an excellent time for this particular intellectual odyssey, because many Americans have reached a crossroads: An unprecedented level of prosperity has bumped into an increasing degree of unease about how we’re meeting our responsibilities as citizens.
“The right to a pursuit of happiness is seen as distinctly American,” said Carol Klimick Cyganowski, associate professor of English and director of the American Studies program. “It’s gone from being a potential to almost an entitlement.”
Cyganowski is one of those professors you wished you’d had for your own undergraduate years. She’s patient and soft-spoken but absolutely passionate about ideas, ready to ruminate at a moment’s notice. There’s no mindless filler in Cyganowski’s speech, none of the “ums” and “you knows” that gum up most people’s sentences.
A while back, Cyganowski and her colleagues found themselves thinking a lot about happiness — not the “Have a Nice Day!” kind of happiness, not the silly platitudes, but the deeper sort of emotional and psychological questions. What makes Americans happy? What doesn’t? What should?
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To get to the bottom of bliss, DePaul will host in the next few weeks a number of free public lectures, panel discussions, open-mike sessions and screenings of films such as “Happiness,” “Waiting for Guffman” and “Seventeen.”
“For students,” Cyganowski said, “it comes down to particular issues: Can you be happy wearing Nikes if you know Nikes are made in sweatshops?”
There’s a growing sense of guilt about our blessings. Hence Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush’s call for “compassionate conservatism,” a slogan that implicitly acknowledges the responsibilities of largesse.
Harvard University professor Juliet Schor — who will speak at DePaul Nov. 6 — has explored similar issues in books such as “The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need.” If things are so great, why are so many people greatly bothered? Is there a dark side to contentment?
The narcotic temptations of nostalgia are such that we blissfully recall childhood happiness as sweet and pure, while adult joy seems to emanate primarily from a race to the cash register behind a piled-up shopping cart. Kids look like innocent celebrants, adults like grabby fiends. But the split is not so clean.
As kids, we revere things for how they make us feel; we do the same as adults. You can argue that a Superman comic book is not as corrupting as a Lincoln Navigator, but then you’re talking degree, not kind.
The older we get, the more complicated the question of happiness seems. Or maybe it’s simple. With all of our SUVs and DVDs and the rest of the alphabet soup of acquisitions, I’m not sure that anything ever surpasses the stark joy of whistling for your dog and beholding, from across the green field, the sight of her racing your way.