‘Happy’ New Year 2023
A friend is among the team of journalists writing obituaries of famous living people for the (UK) Guardian. He writes of statesmen, infamous criminals, and celebrities as if they are gone. Every few years, he updates them. Then, when a Pelé or Barbara Walters dies as they both did last week, the obit is published.
It got me thinking about the meaning of happiness in the Happy New Year. Of how lives, even the most illustrious, wild, beautiful and damned, dwindle to a few inches in a newspaper and are mourned privately.
While driving along the ocean to Chaguaramas, my daughter put on a podcast on how last Christmas, on an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana, NASA launched its most powerful telescope into space.
The ten billion (US) dollar James Webb Space Telescope (named after the NASA boss who launched the Apollo programme that went to the moon) rocketed in 2021 into the cosmos, where it orbits a million miles away from Earth with enough fuel to keep going for 20 years.
The Webb is the closest man has come to time travel. The images will allow us to go back in time to the first stars and galaxies that formed billions of years ago.
I was half listening to this, doing mundane to-do lists in my head, thinking of my brother who died on New Year’s Eve, so many years back, damp eyes just skimming the bright light after rain, sparking sea, trying to understand how my father at 91, who celebrates his birthday today New Year’s Day, still finds happiness. His lessons came to me last week.
Sitting on a bench later that afternoon, in the dappled green shade, I understood my father better (also a cancer survivor) after reading a column by my friend BC Pires who had recently had a major operation to remove two-thirds of his stomach to fight cancer of the oesophagus.
BC, possibly the finest satirical writer in our region, declared in his typical fashion that he didn’t want any presents this year because, as he wrote, “I’ve got all I need already.” “The gift of life is the gift of breath, and I’m labouring to draw air deep into my right lung like a Maraval householder in heavy rain, slapping down sandbags desperately as the river rises.” As he fought for his life, the ‘fat’ had been cut down to the ‘bone’. It’s the measure of BC the man and the writer that even when cut to the bone he’s able to gift us his insight.
The psychology website study.com says the things that predict happiness include the quality of our close relationships, having jobs we love and helping others through volunteer work and random acts of kindness.
The study claims that ‘while billionaires may fly on private jets it doesn’t mean that they are happier than people who drive ten-year-old cars and fly coach.’ Adding that obsessing over money can make humans profoundly unhappy…Research has shown that people who put a lot of emphasis on money and things are not as happy as non-materialistic people.’ It’s why (some) billionaires give away billions, and people are always seeking their authentic selves, taking a cut in salary to do jobs they love.
So if we accept, in context, that we are on Earth for brief nanoseconds of time; that excess wealth is not the key to happiness, but that kindness and volunteer work is; that the gift of breath is the biggest and only gift that matters, and that we should all be taking stock every few years knowing every one of our lives will be reduced to a couple of inches in the newspapers (if that) then, yes that’s happiness.
In moments of extreme joy and sorrow, my father reminds me that the Universe has existed for over 13.7 billion years, that we are as insignificant as ants, and that our lives are brief. Nothing like that to understand how trivial your grocery list is, how futile it is for any human to feel pride at singular achievements or sorrows, knowing we end up as a few kilos of topsoil.
Instead of despairing, we need to live each second intensely, seeking happiness in the right places. The idea that it will make us all happier to contribute towards equity to our fellow humans (two-fifths of the world’s poor–some 3,293 million people live on below US$5.50 a day) is as revolutionary as knowing we will always need the stars.
And even if we are faithless, we know that death is nothing but being reabsorbed into that gold dust of wonder.
Happy birthday to my father. Happy New Year to all