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i dont see the person who said those two statements as a martyr: a martyr is often into it for the suffering, which raises one's capital in whatever symbolic field the martyr floats about in. make them more worthy of something--so it's a relational thing in the context of which suffering is proof. there can be a kind of bliss involved with it, i understand. i dont know: my personal periods of playing the martyr were not terribly fun. i dont think i'm any good at it.
anyway, this person sounds like they do not imagine happiness as a state, like crompsin said, but as a relation and so as something fleeting that can't be a goal, whatever that actually means. so it'd be a consequence of other things that one sets out to do.
for example, the thing that probably makes me happiest as a human being is doing piano performances, but i don't experience much in the way of happiness--i'm nervous as hell before, i kinda trance out during and after am spent and a little giddy and i dont know what just happened.
the happiness comes from the second of third listen to the recording, or after i realize that listening is a little adventure. that makes me happy.
then you keep listening to it and get to know it then it becomes just another thing and i want to do another one. more please. so it's part of a circuit that involves alot of emotions and ways of paying attention, and it's a motor for continuing. maybe its a goal too: i just don't think about it that way. though i, too, am pleased when it shows up.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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