What is happiness?

That is not a rhetorical question. A year ago I wrote about being part of a mass happiness experience (watching a circus act). A few days ago I got to experience vicarious bliss at the Impressionist exhibition at Te Papa. As well as making me intensely happy, it made me think about the nature of happiness again. I wonder if there is a pattern here somewhere?

I did realise, in a moment of clarity, through the blissed out peace, love and nature, totally non-chemically-induced fog, that Maslow would have described it as a peak state. The thing is though,  I didn’t do the painting.

It wasn’t even just that I was looking at pretty pictures. In fact, the paintings were nowhere near as pretty as they look in pictures. From a distance they look like their familiar reproductions. Mothers and children in a garden, haystacks, a valley, the sea. Up close, they are living brushstrokes of wild colours, not realistic but more real to the mind than a photo. More real because they express the experience of the artist as he painted that place in that moment ( of course, it wasn’t the experience of one moment in time,  Monet just waited for a similar moment to recur so he could continue work on the painting). I guess that does explain why the paintings seem so real, it was the reality of the painter’s experience,  not external  reality.

Hmm, maybe it is that I was experiencing the painter’s creativity in the same way we shared the acrobats freedom from gravity. Maybe, even though I have never created wonderful paintings,  I have experienced the same joy in nature as Monet so his experience can also be mine,  and his peak state can be mine too.  I understand a little better now why some people spend fortunes on art.

I could have stayed at the exhibition forever but i knew I didn’t need to. I have seen the shadows passing over the hills and the light on the valley and it makes me happy that Monet thought it important that others saw it too.

The importance of happiness

A few days ago I watched a circus act. Not the bigtop, animal variety but an acrobatic busker show with ropes and a trapeze. I enjoyed it and it made me think and those two things go so well together.

I enjoyed it because it made me feel good. In my mind I was flying and tumbling and stretching and performing amazing gravity-defying feats. I am sure that lots of other people were feeling something similar because we were oohing and aahhing and gasping and cheering in unison. We weren’t conciously thinking about responding, we just were. We were feeling what we were seeing. I don’t know what other people were feeling but my body felt wonderful and I walked away feeling light and free.

I felt happy and part of a spontaneous community of happiness. I don’t know how long that experience lasted for other people, or how intensely other people experienced it, but I do know it was a good thing. I also know that lots of little good things add up and that happiness can be built by fostering happy experiences.

Our society could use a whole lot more happiness, especially communal happiness and there is absolutely no reason why we can’t make it a priority. As a teacher, I know that people learn better when they are happy (Maslow etc) but its crazy to justify the creation of a safe happy environment on the grounds that it will promote better academic results. Happiness is worthy in its own right. Learning, mental health, safe communities etc are way more likely to eventuate when happiness is valued but happiness comes first.

My pretty city

This is my favourite time of year in Christchurch..well right now it is my favourite time of year though I may well change my mind in the lazy summer, or when the leaves are faded velvet or when the mountains are first covered in snow next winter. It is my favourite time because though it is not officially Spring, the air is soft and smells of damp earth and new leaves and just opening buds.

It is the perfect time to park the car in Cranford Square and be amazed again at an inner city park so open and green, encircled by old trees and empty benches and no other person in sight apart from the occasional cyclist just passing through. I promise myself that I will soon come here again and sit on the grass with my thermos of coffee and serious book but that must wait till the soil is warmer and the trees are weighed down with summer leaves.

On this first day of  spring (though not officially The First Day of Spring) the air is soft and earthy and even humans can feel the change that has pushed the crocuses through the bare earth and opened the magnolia buds closest to the sun.   Pale sunseekers stretch across the new grass between the sharp shadows of naked trees.

Soon there will be noisy children discarding ice-cream wrappers and tourists with clumsy feet crowding the rose garden with cameras and water bottles expecting more and ready to move on but not yet. Soon there will be hordes of families and dogs pissing on the daffodils, letting their toddlers maul and trample  but it is early for that yet. The rose garden is silent and bare so I respect its privacy and follow the river past the oblilgatory ducks and canoes, pausing to admire the blossom tree on the far bank. This  postard perfect Christchurch we sell to tourists so I keep walking and look instead for little treasures in the undergrowth, azaleas and irises.

(Only a little more today, I know but…better than nothing! I still want to learn how I can link this to the matchingphotos on flickr)