little_tippler

This relativity of Hapinness stuff reminds me of a true story written by Dr. Oliver Sacks (a neurologist - in his book «An Anthropologist on Mars») about a painter who lost all colour vision. The basic idea behind the story is to show not only this mans trials throughout his condition, but ultimately to show the reader that you are unhappy only for as long as you know what you are lacking (something better, something you tasted and lost, something you can never have but others do). Suffering, for many in the Western world, beyond actual physical pain or illness, is the awareness of happiness (unatainable, that others have and you do not). It's a great book actually, I strongly reccomend it for breaking some well-seated notions people have about life, a humbling read.

edited just to say that on the story about this painter who lost all colour vision, in the beginning he suffered because he had memories of what he used to know, and things looked grey and disgusting (all his food was grey and it sickened him to eat). But gradually his brain forgot this colour notion and he became happy again because he no longer had memories of colour, it was as if it had all been grey that way for as long as he could remember.

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Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.

Fernando Pessoa, 1918