Why Aren’t You Smiling?

I’m often confused by what seems like a cultural mandate for happiness. On the surface, it seems innocent enough, maybe even noble. After all, happiness is wonderful, very beautiful. What puzzles me, however, is that observation of the absence of positive affect (not the same as presence of negative affect, to be clear) frequently seems to spark unease in people. How often have you heard someone comment, “why aren’t you smiling?” or “you look so sad!” during moments when you’re simply deep in thought. Beyond just puzzling, this strikes me as disturbing and problematic. Here is why: both personally, and clinically, I struggle with the temptation to take this mandate seriously. When we do so, we find ourselves questioning each non-joyous emotional experience and searching out what we assume to be a deeply seated problem or pathology. In actuality, as is the case for any emotional experience, happiness (especially strong happiness) is finite and short-lived.

My own knee-jerk reaction to that is basic and strong: “But it feels so good, why can’t I just stay in that all (if not most) of the time?” Indeed, why not commit to the cultural crusade taken up by so many in recent generations? The question feels so compelling that, as above, I take the prospect seriously. For a few blissful moments, I commit myself to no other experience than joy. But in every single attempt that I’ve made along those lines, I’m quickly interrupted by a wife who wants me to wash the dishes, children who need something, or the necessity of tending to my more corporeal needs (eating, making a living, etc.). Time and again, the experiment fails and it seems that the injunction for (sustained) happiness is impossible.

Yet here’s what I find to be the greatest irony: in those moments of what feels like complete defeat and dejection, I hopelessly “give up” on the prospect of happiness and commit myself to the possibility of not only misery but an endlessly unpredictable stream of chaotic internal experiences. Often, it is very shortly after that moment that I catch myself experiencing real and deep happiness. It will inevitably be finite and requires that I’ve truly “given up” quite completely (i.e., with full and honest intention).

Where does this come from, then, this moral law of happiness?! Something of an answer presented itself in the fascinating article below which was sought out in response to conversations with my family about why it seems that no one in “old” photographs are smiling:

http://time.com/4568032/smile-serious-old-photos/

Put briefly, it seems that smiles and happiness were powerful tools for selling cameras when the Kodak company had invented the means for personal photography to be possible. While personal photography seems to need very little marketing at present, a quick perusal of modern advertising convinces me that the tactic is still strong in marketing more universally. Smiles and images of happiness seem effective in selling products.

While I appreciate that the field of marketing is probably not as evil or malevolent as portrayed by the humanities departments of most American universities, I would nonetheless like to exert some personal change on this front. Limitation (as possible) of exposure to advertising is probably helpful but, more centrally, I’d like to reorient myself more fully to an embrace of the finitude of happiness. Let its beauty alight upon me whenever it will (and I will be awfully glad in those moments), but I’ll try harder to accept when it leaves me as it must.