Jezebel
I have never been an exceedingly happy person. For those people who (offline) found me chipper or perky, well, I'm sorry, but I was probably faking it. On the other hand, I've studied two instruments, 3 languages, 5 or 6 different types of dance and I left a promising mainstream job to write for a living. The times in my life in which I was least creative or thoughtful were the times in which I was objectively the most content. It turns out, though, that according to experts quoted in the new Newsweek, I might be sort of normal like that. I can't say it makes me happy, but it probably makes me feel marginally less unique (which maybe makes me less happy). It's a cycle, after all.
There is a growing backlash against the pop-a-pill-get-happy version of recovery, in which those of us marginally depressed are encouraged to be more "normal" in part, according to teacher Jess Decourcy Hinds, "because observing another's anguish isn't easy." NYU Professor Jerome Wakefield (who co-authored The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow Into Depressive Disorder) has students coming up to him all the time asking how to get their parents to lay off the Prozac-pushing because they want to feel their emotions sometimes. And, as previously mentioned, psychiatrist Charles Barber, author of Comfortably Numb notes that emotions — even those brought on by the loss of a relationship, a friend, a job, or a family member — are normal and meant to be felt rather than medicated away.
While significant depression is bad (and requires medication and/or therapy) and it's uncomfortable to watch someone suffer emotionally, some sadness or mild depression is often actually required for some people to learn anything and grow as a person, and it's often necessary for some of us to feel inspired. Author Eric Wilson, whose book Against Happiness came out late last month, argues that "the happy man is a hollow man," but we're pretty sure he meant to say "human."
University of Illinois psychologist Ed Diener finds that there's a high-correlation between self-reported levels of "happiness" and stable, long-term relationships. His reasoning is that "if you have positive illusions about your partner, which goes along with the highest levels of happiness, you're more likely to commit to an intimate relationship." On the other hand, if you're just sort of vaguely unhappy without being actually paralyzed with ennui, you tend to make more money, achieve greater career success, get more educated and pay more attention to politics because you're trying to not be unhappy.
Being stressed and unhappy has a biological purpose, according to Diener and evolutionary biologists, who note that fear tend to force animals into action and "sadness" in mammals tends to result needed empathetic actions in others. Either way, would you rather live in a world in which the music is all Sweet Caroline and the photographs of Anne Geddes or is it a substantially better place with Nina Simone and Vincent Van Gogh even if you have to watch some of the rest of us less-creative types be unhappy?
Happiness: Enough Already [Newsweek]
Earlier: What's The Difference Between A "Real" Depressive And A Lazy Pill Freak?
Comments
YES. people always get angry with me for always being a bit sad/grumpy. but i say, if you're happy all the time, you stagnate, and never push yourself towards makeing your (or anyone else's) life better.
I agree with this, to a point. Sometimes if I miss the Zoloft for a bit, I feel slightly more creative. But that's dangerous, so I shouldn't do that. And after too long I just feel like shit. And I will hit anyone who tells me to "pray" and I'll get happier. Wait, that already happened.
I have ideas for stuff all the time, but sometimes I feel more strongly compelled to get them out when I'm sad. But I probably just need better writing discipline, or whatever. Bah. All writers are lazy. Unless you give us a deadline, we're gonna goof off.
Like many people who write for a living, I definitely get more creative when I'm in a funk. Being in a funk is so good for your writing (and other forms of expression)! Otherwise I churn out stuff that all kinda sounds generic and boring.
Nina Simone all the way.
a world w/Nina Simone and Vincent Van Gogh pls.
Definitely the latter. Though I originally read it as "Nina Garcia and Vincent Van Gogh." I don't know that that changes anything though. Nina Garcia may not be talented, but she represents a world full of criticism,and people who have positions of authority but bad taste.
Having fought depression for the last several years I have found the treatment for it very inconsistant and unfortunitly, not enough for some people. The sad fact is people who are alcohlics or drug addicts have it lucky, they had a CHOICE. And the ones who may not have, the people who took one drink. or took one drug and were hooked, they still are recovering. People look at them as having beat their addiction with admoration. Depression isnt something you "get over" or "cure" It comes as a wave one day, or a very sneeky feeling the next. I define depression as the purest evil there is.
is this why no decent fiction has been written in at least 15 years?
The iconography of The Tortured Artist really irks me. I am not denying that despair can lead to amazing creative output, but it also fucking sucks, in cold hard reality.
I haven't been on anti-depressants for that long, but I haven't lost all feeling or emotion. And what I have lost, I don't mourn. Crying day in and day out and harming myself was awful, and I felt like I was slowly killing myself.
Hey, I'm vaguely happy. Vaguely unhappy sometimes as well. But I'm totally more creative when I'm vaguely unhappy, and sometimes I actually miss high school for that reason- it may have sucked, but it was much more conducive to creative writing. I haven't really been writing as much since college started, too busy being vaguely happy.
Meanwhile, I vote for the Van Gogh. My calendar is a Van Gogh calendar, and it makes my room a better place.
Tell someone youre a drunk, but recovering and they smile and tell you they are proud of you, you tell them you have ever been depressed, they avoid you like the plague.
@J.D.regent: Oh my god. I was just saying that the other day.
umm, kinda think the psychologist is a cynic at heart given his comment "if you have positive illusions about your partner..."
How can happiness be "objective"?
Contentment = complacency. Misery = impetus for change.
Or at least that's what I've been telling myself ever since I decided I really really needed my sex drive back and got off the Zoloft. Now I spend my days veering wildly between crying jags and bouts of implacable horniness.
@lalaland13: never underestimate the power of a deadline. And the power to slack until that deadline comes tumbling down upon you like a thirty-seven ton Acme anvil. Yay freelancing!
@J.D.regent:
Why, because it's all sort of angsty yet blase? When I was working in a kids bookstore all I could read was young adult novels, cause every time I picked up a "adult" book it just seemed overly full or neurosis and egotism.
@J.D.regent: Well, that and editors have generally gotten lousier. It's all about the fast buck now and not the quality of the writing.
@J.D.regent: Holy crap! I was starting to think I was the only one who had noticed.
I don't think I'll be "happy" until I reach my life goals. I think if I were currently "happy" then I wouldn't need such goals...? Does it count that I am "happy" with being a student, but "depressed" and "anxious" because of being a student? Would I be working so damn hard if I were "happy" and content with my current level of education? Damn. This "happy" crap makes my head hurt. Time for another Xanax...
The biggest reason people commit suicide from depression is they are told they are "cured" at some point and never taught that the depression is an energy that can overpower them at anytime. When the depression comes back, they think they have failed and have no hope, then they make the ultimate bad choice.
My entire life, my emotional baseline has been somewhat depressed. As a child, people always thought my parents were harming me (they weren't) in some way because I was not prone to smiling. I stopped worrying about it a while ago. Its too tiring to think about changing something that Prozac (my favorite drug), sunshine, sex, financial stability, and years of therapy have been unable to improve.
@livingdeadgirl: I could go for some bouts of implacable horniness. Lucky Devil.
Happiness is fucking overrated if you ask me.
So true up to a point, but at least for me when my depression was at it's worst I didn't even have the energy for creativity. Or to like, get out of bed.
I'm a lifelong depressive, descended from a long line of depressives, and feel fortunate that I'm not a raging alcoholic or chronically ill in any non-psychiatric sense, as two of my grandparents were. I haven't been on medication in ten years, though there were times I could have used it. Yeah, my creativity has taken a hit at times, though some of those times were when I was too depressed to be creative. There's a sweet spot between happy and depressed, where you can feel your feelings but aren't too sick to feel them, or to function generally. Maybe it's more like "melancholia," in the traditional sense. The Ishmael-style melancholia.
What usually enrages me is when people accuse me of being "negative." I thought I was a critical thinker, but apparently that's not the intellectual asset one might think it would be in the real world. It's in the same vein as being told by strangers to "smile!" No, I will not. I like to have a reason. But I'm also enraged by people who make no effort to ameliorate a natural tendency toward depressive inability to function by not adopting habits that help with that, like getting enough sunlight, taking vitamins, having good sleep habits, drinking too much, abusing drugs (and make no mistake: I'm no Scientologist; I do believe in treating depression with psychotropic drugs), abusing the system, giving depressives a bad name by using it as an excuse for any damn thing, and generally being self-indulgent to the point that it affects other people. Working on my mental health is like dieting. It's everyday, it's a habit, it's MY RESPONSIBILITY. I work very hard at it. And some days I don't feel like smiling, so eat it, everyone who thinks smiling randomly proves something.
Jonathan Safran Foer is pretty good though. He's the only name I think of when I think contemporary fiction.
I think "happy" is overrated. Who is ever "happy" with everything in their lives?
I want to FEEL what ever emotion I'm having. Even when my grief was so intense all I could do was howl in pain. I needed to go through that. I just don't do numb all that well.
Without profound sadness how could I have ever known profound joy?
@KarenWalker: @TheFormerJuneBronson: Yeah, there is a bell curve for sure.
@TheFormerJuneBronson:
Agreed. Especially the part about hating when strangers tell you to smile. Why are women expected to be Suzy Sunshine all the time?
I am reminded of my friend's great aunt, who, when told "Have a nice day!" would snark back "Don't tell me waht to do!"
@TheFormerJuneBronson: That would be, not drinking too much, etc. I think you knew where I was going with that. I hope.
@NefariousNewt: I agree. I think there is a cultural shift to a certain extent, too, but I don't think it has to do with being drugged. I'm not sure what it is. I feel like a lot of the greatly touted books and authors recently have been, wellll...total shit. There's some great stuff out there, but I think that's a big reason.
@alecksander: but compared to like, George Eliot or Kafka or Hemingway or fuck, even John Updike? Nobody's moving any genres along, except in "reality"/memoir/nonfiction writing. Also: music. It scares me and makes me think we are in the end days.
I will say that I used to write a lot when I was depressed, and I don't write so much any more. But what I do write now is MUCH better than what I wrote when I was depressed.
Plus, this isn't counting the people who don't have the energy to do anything--you can't be creative if you can't really get out of bed.
i was complaining to a friend about something, and she actually said "you can chose happiness".
eff that, i chose van gogh, or any vincent over that...isn't gallo in ny?
and I'm still trying to explain to my overly sensitive mother that just because I'm upset about something doesn't mean I'm upset with her, and even if I am that is a natural reaction at times. I grew up in a house where everyone was expected to be fine and dandy all the time and not ever get angry or sad and vent about anything, and it's taken a while to realize that it's okay to experience the whole range of human emotions.
I want to point out that I am 22, but I already am getting a furrow line in between my eyebrows from all the concerned frowning--which is totally fine, because I'll have laugh lines, too.
I've noticed that most of the "happy people" I've met, the kind that always have a smile on their face, usually are not the brightest people. My theory is it's easy to be happy when there's not a lot of thoughts rolling around in your head.
The worst kind of happy person is the one that's perky early in the morning, without coffee. I want to stab those people.
@hydeordie: Heh. I find that people who say things like that are ignorant of what a complicated emotion "happiness" can be for some people.
@J.D.regent: I need to find this article...I don't remember who wrote it or where is was published or anything, so it might be difficult. But he talks about modern literature and how this sort of weird minimalist post-post-modern literature has taken over, and much of it is bad. He talks shit on Ian McEwan, which makes me happy. Also Cormac McCarthy, who, although I love The Road, quite frankly, deserves it.
@J.D.regent: I have to disagree with the music, there is plenty amazing music out there if you know where to look. The problem is you have to look, because no quality makes it into the mainstream anymore and that really is a shame. I'm not comparing Johnathan Safran Foer to anyone I just think he's a pretty imaginative writer who doesn't fall into that strict reality shit.
@TheFormerJuneBronson: i'm so, so, so happy that i'm not the only person who has been commanded to smile by complete strangers. one man once told me that i should do so because "it made HIM happy." i told him to fuck himself (well, in my head i did. outwardly, i think i recall crying)
when i'm depressed i go straight home after work and get into bed. i can't 'create' anything. i can't even do the dishes. when my estranged bf is depressed, he goes straight home and lays on the couch until it's time to go to bed. i can keep this behavior up for weeks at a time and he can go for months. so hey, flip side!
I tend to be most thoughtful and creative in my writing when I'm under great pressure to get something done. "The pressure that makes diamonds" as Hunter S. Thompson put it. I don't create anything when I'm glum - unless hiding in a fort that you built with couch cushions counts.
@J.D.regent: There's some really, really amazing music out there. Trust.
@CollegeBookworm: High schoolers may write more, but there have probably been a total of 3 good adolescent writers in all of history. "A single tear rolls onto my pillow..."
Tangent: Ann Geddes and Celine Dion collaborated a few years ago to produce a calendar. A calendar of photos of Celine Dion holding babies dressed as flowers and vegetables. I truly cannot imagine what kind of people make up the market for that.
@BringBackTheBustle: that has got to be the best misread of the day. i sort of cracked up when i read your nina garcia comment and then i had to do the thing where i pretended i was coughing when the guy at the next cube looked over at me.
On a semi-unrelated note, this Van Gogh is one of my favorites, because it's the painting he sent to Gauguin to convince him to come and start an artists colony in Provence, which is the experiment that eventually led to the whole "ear-cutting" debacle. There's just something so sweet but heart-breaking about it...and I think it makes it all the more appropriate to illustrate this post. That is all.