For Thursday, February 17, 2000 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 709 words

Good grief

Charles Shultz died. Charlie Brown has kicked the football. How sad. I heard in a recent television interview that he wasn't real happy with his life. Gosh. All that money, fame, family, fan love, comedy, and he didn't find true happiness. How very sad.

Saw a recent preview of an upcoming Beach Boys biography special. Guess what…they weren't happy. All that music, money, fame, family, fan love, and they didn't find true happiness.

I saw the movie American Beauty. Kevin Spacey's character, Lester Burnham, died happy: murdered, unemployed and unknown to all but family and friends. What was his secret?

We hear it time and again, people across the socioeconomic spectrum: miserable.

Why is happiness so elusive? We're born, we toil, we enjoy ourselves as best we can, and we kick off. Is it so hard to find happiness? Or is it just too easy to complain.

Aristotle claimed that a person could not evaluate his own worldly happiness until the moment of his death. Aristotle believed true happiness had to encompass an entire lifetime. One could have happy moments and happy days, but a happy life had to be evaluated in its entirety.

What a wacky guy. He also believed birds hid under the ice in winter.

Immanuel Kant gave his two cents on the nature of happiness in his snappy little treatise -- The Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals. He said one must have a good will to deserve true happiness. And I quote: "Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, which can be called good, without qualification, except a good will. Intelligence, wit, judgment, and the other talents of the mind, or courage, resolution, perseverance, as qualities of temperament, are undoubtedly good and desirable in many respects; but these gifts of nature may also become extremely bad and mischievous if the will which is to make use of them, what is called character, is not good…Thus a good will appears to constitute the indispensable condition even of being worthy of happiness."

So, according to Manny, bad people aren't happy, even when they are successful. All the blue- and white-collar crooks, the philanderers, the gold diggers, the cheats and sneaks, even if they get all the best health, good looks, hot dates, fast money, longest vacations, and live to be 100, they aren't happy. Well, that's some consolation.

Still, there are a lot of unhappy people out there of good will. It may be a prerequisite, but it's no guarantee. I'd like to think Charles and at least a couple of the Beach Boys had good will.

So, what does it take? What is the happy formula? It's not necessarily wealth, health, beauty, or bliss. I don't believe that it differs with each individual. There are universal elements. What could they be?

Let me guess.

A contented understanding of the nature of God and the cosmos and our place in it has to bring happiness. Therefore a pursuit of philosophy may be more rewarding that a pursuit of sex and cash. Though I'm not knocking sex and cash.

A rewarding life will bring happiness, and good will toward others brings reward. Give Manny the credit for that one.

A full experiential life will bring happiness. Voltaire had his characters in Candide choose -- would they rather suffer all the painful experiences in the world or sit in a room and do nothing. They chose experience.

I have led a happy life, but I don't care for dying. Dying would make me unhappy. I would prefer not to. Where does the sadness related to death come from, for me? Knowing I hadn't been everywhere and seen everything and done everything I wanted to do makes me unhappy about dying. I don't want to miss anything.

What would make me contented with death? Exhaustion. Satiation. If I could reach a point in my life where I could say, "Whew. Thank goodness it's over. I've seen enough. I've given all I've got to give. I'm ready to move on." That would make me happy.

So maybe old Aristotle wasn't so wacky after all. Maybe he was aware of Lester Burnam's secret: True happiness is achieved only on the last day.

Happiness can be such a morbid subject.