I’m happy, don’t ruin it.

It is fashionable to be bitter. Looking at YM status messages and blogs, it looks like people nowadays have something against being happy. A couple of decades ago, Theodor Adorno (1984) declared “Happiness is obsolete. Uneconomic.” True enough, unhappiness drives consumption, legitimising our urge to buy a new pair of shoes or watch a movie or binge on chocolates or buy a new paper shredder (obviously, this is just me). Media also validates (Bourdieu, 1998) bitterness as a fashionable frame of mind. Wouldn’t it be “super cool” to identify to Gregory House, Cristina Yang, Liz Lemon, or even Mohinder Suresh?

While successfully ignoring my readings today, I read Kurt Vonnegut’s A Man without a Country (2006). In one of the final chapters, he talked about his Uncle Alex, whose main complaint against other human beings was “that they seldom noticed it when they were happy.” Ally McBeal (1997) supports this point – “Maybe I’m happy. I just don’t know it.” Vonnegut continues –

“So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’ … I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

Anyway, this post has nothing to do with me being the new posterchild of happiness. Far from it. It's just that this afternoon, still in the spirit of ignoring my readings, I spent so much time listening to String Quartet tributes while drinking Nicaraguan Coffee which made me say “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

String Quartet Tribute to Coldplay, Clocks

String Quartet Tribute to Fall Out Boy, Sugar We’re Going Down

---

Adorno, T. (1984) Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. (First published in German, 1951) London: Verso

Bourdieu, P. (1998) On Television. New York: The New Press

McBeal, A. (1997) “Compromising Positions” in Ally McBeal Season 1. (Created by David E. Kelley). First aired September 22, 1997.

Vonnegut, K. (2007) A Man without a Country. (First published in 2006) London: Bloomsbury Publishing