The Groove 162 - What It Takes to Be Happy
WHAT IT TAKES TO BE HAPPY
In the 300,000 years since we Homo Sapiens walked the earth, happiness has remained an elusive goal for our species.
Some studies point out that when people are in their 40s, they are in their most unhappy years. Other surveys indicate that while younger generations are richer and healthier than their predecessors, their levels of happiness are dismal in comparison.
Could it be that the self-help movement, which preaches happiness at all costs, has poisoned us to believe that this should be our consistent state no matter what else happens in our life? Is it social media? Our culture’s lack of profound faith and spirituality? What if we’ve been consuming the wrong concept of happiness all along?
I looked at the life of the legendary artist Agnes Martin for some answers. This is an artist whose writings and interviews are as important as her famous minimal six-foot-square canvases on which she drew horizontal lines in graphite and painted vigorous brushstrokes in between, using palettes that varied from pale colors to gray, white or black. Her artistic vision, which was profoundly informed by silence and spirituality, had a lot to do with her interpretations of happiness, which she said she attained through her work and for the rest of her life until she died in 2004 at the age of 92.
Know Your Responses to Your Work
Agnes Martin in her studio in New York in 1955.
In 1967, just when her New York career was taking off, Martin left the city. She traveled the country and stopped making art for seven years. When she finally settled in New Mexico, she built an adobe house with her own hands on a remote mesa and remained there until the end of her life. She was a loner and a recluse. Strange conditions for someone to be happy, yet Martin offered her wisdom from a space of self-awareness and self-reflection.
In her 1987 essay "Beauty is the Mystery of Life," she asked us to look within and to find the truth about ourselves in the work we do: “Our emotional life is really dominant over our intellectual life, but we do not realize it… You must especially know the response that you make to your own work. It is in this way that you discover your direction and the truth about yourself… You must look at the work and know how it makes you feel… If you are not an artist, you can make discoveries about yourself by knowing your response to work that you like.”
Part of what Martin was pointing out is what psychologists have defined as meaning: a combination of coherence (things happen for a reason), purpose (direction in life), and significance (your life matters). If we can accept these three things, we know that obstacles and problems are inevitable and that we can derive happiness from what we do only when we know what we want and why we do what we do. It’s about finding real connections between our skills, passions, and a positive impact on others.
Living Above the Line
Agnes Martin’s retrospective at LACMA, Los Angeles, in 2016.
The truth is that no one is happy all the time. You’d think that the rich, famous, and powerful have all they need to be happy and yet they still succumb to divorces, scandals, illnesses, dramas, and all sorts of vicissitudes.
When asked in an interview what kind of things made Martin happy, she answered: “The things that make me happy is to see the effect of love in life. If you see somebody being kind to someone, even children are sometimes kind to each other… I like to see love being effective in the world. I like to think of it in the abstract.”
Martin was talking about pure love as the life force that creates good things. The one that’s inherent of human beings when they are born, without all the intellectual constructions and separations that are formed through education, experience, and culture. This is a hard concept to grasp but one that merits being examined.
“I believe in living above the line. Above the line is happiness and love, you know. Below the line is all sadness and destruction and unhappiness. And I don't go down below the line for anything.”
It takes a conscious effort to live like this. To stop yourself every time you want to catastrophize, separate, judge, blame or see the worst in people. Living above the line, the way Martin did, is worth striving for.
Avoid Pride
Agnes Martin in New Mexico, 1974.
Of the seven capital sins, it’s often said that pride is the most dangerous one. It validates mistakes and wrong actions with self-righteousness. It’s also the worst possible expression of the ego. Pride pushes people to do things blindly, and sooner or later those actions bring more unhappiness. Think about anyone who has acted on pride and ask yourself if that has brought them long-term happiness.
Martin said that “Pride is completely destructive. It never leaves anything untouched. First it takes one way. . . telling you that you're alright. . . boosting up your ego, making all kinds of excuses for you. Pride can attack your neighbors and destroy them. But sometimes, pride turns, and destroys you. She also notes that while it takes time and great effort "to turn against pride and get rid of it entirely," the process is necessary in order to find clarity and make meaningful work.
Bishop and philosopher Fulton Shield wrote in an article called “Happiness” — which was published posthumously in the 1982 book On Being Human— that “happiness is conditioned on two things: an overall purpose in life and, second, the crushing of egotism and selfishness.” You don’t need many more words or explanations. He encapsulated in one sentence what Martin had been philosophizing on all her adult life.
As we navigate the complexities of life, genuine joy often flourishes when we shed the superficial layers of ego and self-importance. By embracing humility not as a sign of weakness but more as a measurement of maturity, and by seeking meaningful and authentic connections with our work and the world around us, we unearth a deeper and more enduring sense of fulfillment. In choosing a path illuminated by purpose over pride, we not only find happiness but contribute to a richer and more unadulterated human experience.
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