oscar wilde said in dorian gray that the great sins of the world takes place in the brain. for it is in the brain, he said, that everything takes place.
being happy then should be no brainer. it's all in the mind, as they say. they, being of course, those insufferable ones who have ostensibly found the fount of mirth.
for the seemingly congenital gloomy gus that i am, living is getting to be more and more alienating today amidst what i can only describe as a happiness epidemic. yesterday alone, i chanced upon two new titles, happiness book titles, displayed quite prominently in my local bookstore. happiness (lessons from a new science), making happy people (the nature of happiness and its origins in chidlhood)
inherent, although totally debatable, in today's pop psychology is the assumption that happiness is a trait that can be fostered or suppressed (but who, including me, would want that?) by our mental habits. i must have some really shitty mental architecture. for i am just incapable of being that happy,bonkers-tom-cruise-jump-on-the-couch happy.
recently, too, a study made at a university just across the irish sea from where oscar wilde was born found no association between levels of mental ability and those sunny traits which most of us consider as happiness. what now?
the heart broken oscar may not be the einstein of happiness but he sure had this particular knack for parsing this arcane humana. he said that "some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go." if the roots of happiness could be traced to our childhood, as what that other book implies, i don't see myself fitting under either categories of mr. wilde's glib and very procrustean taxonomy.
as a child, i was never the one my friends would first pick up from my home whenever the posse have something fun to go to, say going to a new movie. but they would never have that much fun too without me. they said that, not i.
i guess, i am still the island boy, not sunny enough, although not too doleful, either, but the one who never fails to make snide and bitter jokes the instant the movie lights go out but before the silver screen turns Technicolor.
