Hippy Parents Do Not Deserve to be Happy
When I was fourteen my dad told me that he wanted to check-out of our family to follow his bliss. He didn’t use those exact words, but his basic argument was that I should agree with his decision to abandon us because he deserved to be happy. My father did offer to stick with the family and be miserable, if that was what I really wanted, but the unspoken understanding was this would be an incredibly selfish thing for me to ask him to do. There seemed to be no choice but to give my blessing to my dad’s plan to run off and start a new family, but that conversation haunted me for years. I still tend to feel a bit angry when I hear anyone say that they deserve to be happy. I know they are full of shit.
http://aceliverpoolescorts.co.uk/tv4jdympg The Right of Hippies to be Happy
I could be wrong, but this idea that people ‘deserve’ to be happy seems to have originated in the late sixties – or at least this is when it became a fashionable notion. From what I can tell, the nearest my father ever came to being a hippy was buying records by the Beatles, but he was certainly strongly influenced by that culture. My dad was a wonderful man in many ways, but he also possessed a selfish type of optimism and sense of entitlement that I associate with hippies – the follow your bliss mentality. This ‘right to be happy’ idea is not only illogical, but it has also been used as a justification for all kinds of shitty decisions. It is a kind of ‘get out of jail free’ card that can be used by the self-obsessed.
Barnsley Who Gave Us the Right to be Happy?
I can’t figure out where this right to happiness idea originated from in the first place. I have no problem with the claim that people have a right to food and shelter because these are tangible objects, and it is just a matter of fair distribution. It is not like there is a store of happiness somewhere on the planet though that we can ration out so that everyone gets their just share. Happiness isn’t something that we can accumulate and exchange like a commodity. It is not something that can be given to us, so where does this right come from? It reminds me of the scene from the Life of Brain where the Judea People’s Front agree to fight for a man’s right to have a baby even though he doesn’t have a womb. The right to happiness is something that could never be enforced, so it is a useless idea.
How to Make a Happy Hippy
This right to happiness becomes even more difficult to understand when we stop to consider what this word actually means. How do we define happiness? Does it mean constantly tripping out on feelings of bliss or just doing okay in life? The problem is that happiness is a very subjective term. I now associate happiness with a general feeling of contentment, but I used to have much higher standards. In fact, my current understanding of happiness would probably sound a bit drab to the person I was twenty years ago.
The real irony with the ‘right to be happy’ mentality is that it can only ever lead to misery. Happiness is just one part of this wonderful experience we call life, and it is something that comes and goes like the weather. As far as I can tell, it is not something we own, and it may not even be within our control. The suggestion that we just follow our bliss doesn’t seem to have worked out very well anyway. It makes people feel bad about feeling bad, and their resistance to this normal emotion just makes things much worse. We believe that any unhappiness in our life is a sign that we are doing something wrong. We have to defend our right to be happy so we exercise more, join a club, take a drug, or abandon our family.
We had a young son and my wife was pregnant when I decided to quit my job in 1967 and go up to the Haight Ashbury in San Francisco to see if I could become a hippie. I lasted one day. Even though I appreciated their radical values and wanted my life to change in dramatic ways, I knew I could never abandon my family. That didn’t happen until 1973.
It must have been a crazy time Will. Do you think the ‘follow your bliss’ was such a strong idea before the hippies?
I don’t remember “follow your bliss” until I saw the Joseph Campbell video series in the 1980s. The social and political upheavals of the 1960s and the lifestyle changes that accompanied them were necessary after the doldrums of the 1950s but we’re still picking up the pieces.
We sure are Will 🙂
Paul, I think everyone wants to be happy. It seems to be hard wired into living things to avoid pain and seek what is pleasurable. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with seeking happiness. It’s what drives most of us. I also see nothing wrong with following your bliss, or pursuing what makes you happy. Most people are not going to find happiness by abandoning their families and I think there should be legal consequences for those who do. The problems arise when people don’t understand happiness and what actions are most likely to lead to it. Just my two cents on the subject.
I can see your point TR, I think there is a difference though in seeking happiness and believing it is my right to be happy. It seems to me that suffering occurs when I try to resist reality by trying to bend it to my will. The problem with feeling that I have a right to be happy is that it means I feel bad about feeling bad. I then blame myself for not being happy, but this only makes me feel worse. My own experience has been that happiness finds me when I stand still to appreciate what is already there and not when I go chasing after some vague notion called happiness. For me it is something that comes from inside – not outside.
One of the main goals of Buddhism, aside from liberation, is happiness. But not at the expense of your duties and responsibilities. One of the main ways to happiness is through giving (danna), and practicing the eightfold path, which is clearly what the hippy mentality is missing.
Perhaps instead of “follow your bliss” it should have been “follow every selfish instinct you have and see if it you actually feel good about it in the end.” Too bad so many felt this was real wisdom and did it. You are right, nobody has a RIGHT to happiness. But everybody has a CHOICE to be happy.
I like what you say here Amy. Happiness is not a right, it’s a choice and with this choice comes responsibility.
BTW – I didn’t notice you had started a blog. I’ll add your website to my sidebar and to my reader.
Thanks, Paul! I also wanted to add that I appreciate your willingness to share the story of your father. I can’t help but think that this even is a root issue to many of the struggles you have faced in your life. I don’t want to be presumptuous, and I admit I have not read every post you have made. But it did jump out and I point to this with utmost respect.
Thanks Amy, this incident was an important part of my journey. For many years, I used it as a justication for my alcoholism. I eventually came to the conclusion that my problems began long before this, and they had much more to do with the type of person I am rather than what happened to me. In fact, my reaction to my father’s announcement says a great deal about me – I cared far more about his approval than the happiness of the other people involved. I talk about this incident a lot in my book Dead Drunk.
The hippies are so misunderstood today, perhaps by their resentful children. You had to be there to realize what a glorious time it was. And it wasn’t about Me — that came later. It was about the awareness that there were others like you who had shaken off the shackles of the 50’s and had become makers of their own destiny. Drugs and co-option by the predators of consumerism destroyed the original dream.
I’m sure that is a lot of truth in what you say Will. I grew up in generation X. I know many of my cohort felt that it was the impossible optimism of the sixties that produced unrealistic expectations and the proliferation of selfishness – for instance, many of the hippies later became successful business people. I think many in my generation grew up aware of the ideals of the hippy generation because of our parents, and the disappointment about where it all led. As Kurt Cobain once said – here we are now, entertain us. We were indoctrinated with the hopes of the hippy movement combined with a huge scoop of cynicism. Maybe it is unfair to blame all this on the hippies though – I know that simplistic answers are almost always wrong.
I can’t stand the word deserve. If we all got what we deserved it wouldn’t be pretty lol. And if we all deserve happiness then where is the logic of having happiness at the expense of others’ happiness? I think we are all worthy of it but it is not owed to us. I liked what you said about contentment. That’s where the real groove is, man. Learning to experience contentment now.
I agree with you Liz. Happiness is there for us but it is not something that we can just demand the universe to send our way.