The Perplexity of Happiness

"The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the
more I will respect myself."
-Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

No one thought to mention the perplexity of being happy, the way, unbidden, the mind will float away from time to time and rest lightly from one contented thought to another, making concentration difficult. It can dull our survival senses, blanket our ability to see the hard truth of a situation and ruin our abilitiy to make cold analytical decisions. But for most of us, finding and keeping happiness in our lives is survival. We live our lives for those happy moments, seeking them in companionship and purposeful work. Yet Proust said that happiness only serves to make unhappiness a possibility, and Bronte seemed convinced that living a lonely life was the only way to find self respect. Do we hide behind happiness to avoid confronting our personal faults? Do we perpetuate our despair by seeking the allusive blue bird of happiness? Probably. There is reason in those depressing vitriolic prose. But really, who wants to live their life constantly aware of every pain and sorrow, fault and mistake of the world and themselves? Why beat up on something as genuine and sincere as true contented happiness when so few people find it in life? Why must we pull others down when we are miserable and insecure? We can be a sad species sometimes.