Tooth loss was definitely a highly anticipated stage of my childhood. I didn’t like the actual physical feel of wiggling the loose tooth until the final, nerve-shattering pull that separated it from my gum. But in the long run, it was worthwhile.
There was a fixed price from the tooth fairy of a tickey, (obsolete now) or three South African pennies. (None of those either!) I loved that little coin. I didn’t even think of spending it. But it was pure happiness to know that the fairy had cared enough about the precious tooth to pay me for it! |
See, that’s the thing. It seems as though folks in search of happiness very often start off by feeling contented. Then they look around, and see others with more. The original contentment withers. So whatever they had doesn’t bring happiness anymore.
It’s like upgrading your airline seat. Once economy worked. Now you want business or first class. If you get that it doesn’t take too long before you’d like another airline with more first-class temptations.
Obviously, I’m not the first person to go hunting for happiness. A whole industry has arisen around this phenomenon over many years. You can go on retreats, on journeys to pay for wealthy swamis and others who will in turn bless you with their secrets to finding out the meat and bones of what it means to be truly happy.
The only problem with searching with this method comes when you realise your happiness is a totally different thing from theirs. Happiness is kind of fleeting. Now you feel it, now you don’t. But it is valued, no question about that. Even though there’s no picture of your own interpretation of it anywhere.
It’s personal. I go gaga over trees, plants, stars in the sky, and seedlings coming up from the ground. Someone else could care less about these things. They prefer to strap themselves onto a flimsy kite and jump off a mountain.
You get the idea. There’s no happiness fairy to wave a wand and bless you with your own brand of bliss every day. Winning a lotto might come closest to that, although I’ve heard a lot of folks actually suffer after doing that.
I’d like to try that kind of suffering though, purely as a scientific thing. To know whether indeed money can bring happiness I’ve never experienced before. It might well be the key.
Yes, it bothers me that everyone would like happiness in their lives, but no one knows why, or even what it looks like. It just hangs out there, like a carrot on a stick, keeping just out of your reach.
I think I’m happy most of the time. But what does that mean? Is contentment a lower or higher form of happiness? Is the glow you get from helping others, from donations to those in need, and so forth, merely a self-serving action with the hopes of finding happiness in a different way?
Tooth fairies are for the losses of children. Happiness fairies are so much in demand every day for the grownups.