Anne SG and the Big C

And another of Aristotle’s gems: “Learning is not child’s play; we cannot learn without pain.”

If you did not already know, I am a huge fan of Aristotle’s.  I fell in love with reading in kindergarten (and with books years before that), but I fell in love with learning in graduate school (yes, very late) when I first met Aristotle in his books on Rhetoric, Poetics, and Ethics.  I eventually became a rhetorician–that is, someone who studies the theories and practices of how people communicate with one another to get things done.

But I posted the quote (above)  in particular because I have been thinking about Aristotle’s thoughts on happiness.  He was very interested in ethics, and in the quote he mentions how happiness is always our goal.

Sure seems simple.  I mean, of course we are all trying to be happy.  Right?  I can’t imagine anyone deliberately seeking out misery–even those of us who do ourselves harm are doing it in some fashion to become happier.  What Aristotle is really getting at here–and what I’ve been really learning the past year (again, late)–is that happiness really is an internal search, not an external acquisition.  We often hear older people who’ve become quite wealthy yearning for their “salad days” when they were young and had far less money.  Why is that?

When I was in graduate school I was tempted, more than once, to throw in the towel and change career objectives entirely–I told my father I wanted to be a toll-taker on the New Jersey turnpike.  After all, they make WAY more money than professors ever will.  One of the professors in my program told me not to give up–to “keep my eyes on the prize.”  What I never stopped to ask was, “what is the prize?”  I never really defined the prize–I just kept up late hours, wrote my dissertation, and finished my Ph.D. I guess I thought there was going to be some lifetime satisfaction–some pot-o-gold (aka happiness) and that I could sit back and enjoy the moment I got that prize.

Wrong.  Having a Ph.D. didn’t make me happy.  Being called “professor” or “Dr. S-G” or having the power of the red pen on students’ essays gave me no big thrill, though having a great class discussion sure did.  I loathe administrative work, but it can be tolerable if the endless hours of meetings end up making lives better in some way.  The monetary success, well, I’ll just go ahead and admit that I never got into it for the money, and never expected to have any money.

Some people see happiness through acquisition–a new car or house or baby or spouse or diamond ring is going to end all their worries and make them happy.  They think that if they can just keep up with the Joneses they will be ok.  That’s what I thought. I kept setting goals in front of myself thinking that achieving them would make me happy.  It wasn’t necessarily cars or designer handbags I wanted, but getting the degree, getting a job, getting tenure, were my versions–all of them about accepting success from others rather than defining it for myself.  Although, I admit, the a new black luxury SUV sure looks good to me, too.

But this past year I’ve finally started to look inward for happiness.  I’m sorry that it took cancer to kick me into the right place to do this, but I’m glad it did.  I’m not saying I’m going to reject life’s luxuries–my cousin and I have a full shopping and spa day planned for when I’m done chemo and surgery and I have every intention of buying myself some nice things.  What I mean, really, is that happiness is what we all want, and sometimes we look in the wrong places.  And as cliche as that sounds, it’s true.  I envy people who have always understood this.

My happiest moments have not been those times when I’ve received accolades from others, even though I was relentlessly pursuing them at work as sure markers of my success.  My happiest moments have been in the more mundane moments–just doing things I truly love–whether in the classroom, at the computer writing (oh, the joy of a well-written sentence!), or with my husband and children and our friends and family, doing things for the sake of feeling good and doing good (broadly defined).  Aristotle believed that true happiness came not from seeking to acquire things (intangibles included), but when we do good things–things that benefit ours and other people’s lives.  When we lead ethical, thoughtful lives, regardless of what other people do or think, we are happy.  I’ve tried to be an example of ethical behavior to my children, but all too often I did things to make other people approve of me professionally, instead of because they made the world–my world–a better place.

My love of education began with Aristotle, and it’s time I got back to him and remembered his thoughts on happiness.  I think I will be happy when I do work that satisfies me and my sense of the world.  We have choices in life, and I am lucky to have more choices than many people do, especially about how I choose to direct what I do with my days.

Aristotle also said: “We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.”  And by extension, we become happy by doing things that make our souls happy.  We become by doing, not by thinking about doing.  Or, as my grandfather used to say: “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”