Now and then I am happy and owing to the era in which I live I believe I ought to be able to explain this. That the impulse is a mistake doesn’t matter. I am the great great grandson of rationalists. I can explain to you how a lever works–I have always liked Archimedes–and I can also explain how the Roman aqueducts were built and therefore, by God I ought to be able to explain happiness.
In our present decade we’re advised that feelings of contentment or hopefulness are chemical products, and no doubt this is true. My feet are also chemical products and I see no reason to dispute the matter. The human brain is mostly carbon. So happiness is serotonin, dopamine, and electricity. This is certain.
Gandhi said: “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
Then I have to ask, does the happy work I perform come from chemicals or somewhere else? Are the words I cherish nothing more than hydrogen bonds? Sense and sensibility and their achievement are the major ingredients of happiness and consciousness is fueled by electrolysis but not fed by it. In other words, beauty is twice beauty when you’re awake.
Of course I mean awake as Thoreau used the term. The man who is awake is richly alive and curious.
Happiness is curiosity. Obscurity and music are resolvable with curiosity. This is what makes tyrants bite the rug: no one can take curiosity from you.
Planet of the Blind 