Happiness is Ephemeral

Since I often try to avoid the news, and emotion-jerking blogs (which, while they may be relevant, often just exist to raise the blood pressure of their readers--to no good purpose), I consider myself well-insulated against culturally-induced depression.

This feeling of mine was reinforced by a news segment that I accidentally caught on NBC Nightly News, which sought to inform viewers that women, on the whole, were unhappy more hours of the week than men (according to "a new study"). While the report may be true (or not), it failed to define happiness, or how such a definition of happiness might be expressed or measured. This leaves us with no useful information, while at the same time, making women feel a sense of unease...how happy am I? we ask when we hear such things. If we hear them often enough, a mild depression is ripe to set in.

However...unhappiness has its purposes.

I might be happy, for instance, at the thought of taking off with a couple of girlfriends for a free-wheeling trip to the Goodwill Outlet Store while DH takes care of the kids. However, on the way there I must pass a fortress-like strip mall wherein resides an abortion mill. This gets me thinking about all the ways we contrive to carry on with our lives despite unspeakable horrors happening under our very nose. These thoughts reduced the "hours of happiness" I may be likely to experience this week. But am I really better off--is the world really better off, had I striven to avoid these thoughts, or if they had not come into my head at all?

I'm happy when my husband comes back from a long trip and, naturally, I expect the kids to be just as angelic as they were when it was just the three of us, but they're often not. Therefore I am more unhappy about their behavior when he's home, which often tarnishes the joy I feel at my husband's company. This causes me to be more firm and consistent in how I enforce the rules (and gives my husband down-and-dirty lessons in parenting). Is this lack of happiness some great tragedy? Should I send an e-mail to Brian Williams?

I'm pretty happy with our family and our life and the direction it's taking...that is, until I get a phone call from a close family member who pitches some immoral scheme to me. And then get hung up on when I categorically refuse to go along with it. Now unhappiness surrounds me like a cloud. I can't stop thinking about it, or talking about it with my husband. My "hours of happiness" for next week are bound to be seriously reduced by the fallout from this situation. However, to acquiesce to such a scheme would have been not only a serious sin for me, but an act of grave uncharity to my erring loved one, who would have been allowed to persist in the delusion that he can get whatever he wants just by pulling enough strings.

News flash to NBC: Happiness isn't everything. Women may feel "unhappy" more hours of the week than men, but it is only because we care more about certain stuff than guys do, and the way we often express caring is through negative emotions...like feeling sad, angry, or depressed. But this doesn't mean that all we need is for the men in our lives to start doing dishes or send us off to the spa. We don't need more laws and legislation designed to "emancipate" us.

What we need to do is accept the unhappiness for what it is--an engine for change--and to pray and act accordingly. The world would be a better place. And that would make everybody happier.