Briefly on happiness
This is the final scene of Trainspotting, Danny Boyle's filmed version of Irvine Welsh's book of the same name.
We see Renton, a young man who might be at the end of a long heroin-addiction journey. He experienced the death of friends, he stole everything he could steal and sell to get heroin, he hung out with friends who acted like enemies, he wanted, he had no sex drive, he had sex drive. The book and the film are very much products of the 1990s.
You did not see William Burroughs depict heroin use like that in Junkie. I think Burroughs wrote in a more fluent way.
The way Renton looks as he's walking over a bridge, a smile on his worn-out face, a smile that grows bigger as it blurs over the screen, and then lights-out, what does it say?
In fact, as we see Renton walking away, it's the result of something we've seen throughout the film: he always looks completely turned off, as though he's most often unavailable to the viewer. On the other hand, because of Danny Boyle's want to turn most of his lead characters into comic-book characters, there are a lot of scenes where Renton pulls faces and appears to live, but these are comic elements, like the start of the film, when Renton is chased by police to Iggy Pop's 'Lust for Life', is hit by a car, and is tackled to the ground.
Renton's face might change at any second. Nobody can smile forever. Perhaps nobody should smile forever. I don't know.
Somehow I remember Michel de Montaigne. I think of Sarah Bakewell's brilliant book How to Live: A Life of Montaigne, and especially this part where Sarah speaks of an experience that Montaigne had when thrown off a horse:
Here's the transcript:
So Montaigne started out in life as just your average French young nobleman with an estate to inherit, and he worked as a magistrate in the city of Bordeaux. He went along like that for 13 years, but one day towards the end of that, he had an experience which, I think, changed his life.
He was riding one day with his friends, and he was another rider slammed into his horse from behind, and Montaigne was thrown violently from his horse. He landed with such a bang on his head that he was knocked out. Also, he had a blow to his chest, which made him vomit blood, and his friends carried him back to the house, and according to what they told him afterward, he was tearing at his clothes, and he was very distressed, and looks as if he was suffering. He came around afterward and started remembering the experience, and it changed his attitude to death. Until that moment, he'd been terrified of dying; he'd tormented himself with the thought that you had to somehow rehearse death, and study it; to philosophise was to learn how to die, which was an idea that he'd got from Cicero, but afterwards, he completely changed his mind about that, and began to think that actually, when death comes, you’re [...] not even there, because you’re drifting in this pleasurable state. So, it was like falling asleep, but very pleasurable, voluptuous, as he said, and it was as if life was just, just touching him by the tip of the lips, and he was drifting away.
And therefore, there's no point in preparing for it, and you should just sort of, you know, not worry, basically. 'Don't bother your head about death'; it became his his new philosophy, but it did change his attitude to life and, rather than to death, and after that, he started to seem to think slightly differently.
And very shortly after that, he resigned his job as magistrate, and he retired to look after his estate full-time because he did inherit his estate, but also he began to write [...] these little narratives of his, of his reading, things that he picked up, things that interested him, and as he went on, he became more interested in his own experience of the world. And he began to write [...] about that that near-death experience. A couple of years later, he traced it as it had unfolded from the inside, and as it had felt to him. He reflected on how it had made him think about death differently, writing very personally, writing about consciousness, the stream of consciousness from within. And it was that, that made him, that the extraordinary writer that he became.
In the face of death, in the face of life, we change. When do we not change? Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, may have said, 'No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.' It's profound and it's obvious. We all change. Or do we?
When do we not change? What is change?
Some people believe we are the same as adults as we are children, padded with experience, but, essentially we are the same persons. We don't change.
I think that's hogwash, because I've seen enough people change during my existence to know it is untrue. I've seen people to go hell and back and to hell again. Most of us have, I think, even though we might not realise it right now.
So, what is happiness?
Bodil Malmsten, the Swedish writer, said happiness is extremely fleeting. It's there, it's gone. Mostly, it's not here nor there. It's not a field into which one steps and frolicks. You can't turn it on and off at will.
I saw a TV series yesterday. A character said romantic love fades and becomes something deeper. Other characters baulked at the definition and rejected it, perhaps because they were afraid that that the statement could be true or perhaps because it seemed dire.
Bodil came back to the notion of happiness as fleeting and wonderful if you could get it. If you could get it.
But, what is happiness?
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines the word:
1 a : a state of well-being and contentment : joy b : a pleasurable or satisfying experience
States and experiences pass.
And that's fine.
As long as we aim for happiness and to realise it is fleeting, that's fine, at least speaking for myself.
I want everyone I love to be happy. I want them to never suffer. I want them to all have good health and feel loved, to know they are loved.
Did Renton have real friends while he was addicted to heavy drugs? What is a real friend? Did Renton feel happy? What is heroin-incited feelings that are very similar to happiness? Can heroin abuse be happiness? What is happiness?
These are faint questions that pop into my head.
Pleasure or well-being or both, I wish all of it on people. Weird thing: my mind says, without feeling badly or poorly, can we ever experience happiness? Can happiness only exist if bad sides exist? Can God exist if the Devil would not exist? Hello protestant Swedish state school, for making me think that black-and-white way.
On to work. I've got to go to work.