Happyness…

I was watching 106 & Park, peeping the latest videos and just enjoying my day off.  Apparently, there’s a part in the show during which the hosts pop a profound Question of The Day. This day’s question is as follows: Would you rather be happy and poor or rich and sad?

Good on BET for making me think in-between vapid rap and R&B videos (sorry for “hating” but that “Birthday Sex” song blows).

My knee-jerk answer to this question is happy and poor, of course. I mean, who doesn’t wanna be happy? To elaborate, most people are already conditioned to finding happiness in dire financial straits. If you’re stuck for cash you have to find simple little imaginative things to amuse yourself. As a kid I made dolls (or more accurately, live-action stick figures) out of toilet paper until Mama scolded my ass for wasting the TP.  My sister and I would tell stories and record them on a cassette. I discovered the joys of writing during childhood. We were, by all accounts and statistics, poor but happiness amidst poverty was doable. Easy answer.

But what of wealth and sadness? Predictably, lots of people on 106 & Park’s Twitter poll voted for being happy and poor over being sad and rich. We’re American, after all. The pursuit of happiness is ingrained in us from inception. But what does it mean to really be happy? I thought about this little question even further. In America, isn’t the condition of happiness without wealth the same as sadness with wealth? Each is a condition of lack or longing for something. When you think about that question it’s like asking would you rather be alive or living. That’s a good question.

Upon further consideration I’ve reached my Final Answer. If I really have to choose–at the risk of sounding cynical and unromantic–I’d have to choose sad and rich. Ultimately, sadness is kind of a condition of life. Same as happiness. To be fully alive or living is to have instances of both happiness and sadness intermittently. You may as well be rich so that, at the very least, money is no longer an obstacle. You’ll be free to be sad about the myriad other things in life that are worrisome: war, the poverty of others (which, as a rich person, you could maybe help to change), global warming, evil, the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012 and the coming apocalypse, death, etc.

Choosing to be poor and happy is choosing to be poor with perhaps frequent spurts of joy sprinkled throughout. Even if you are relatively content with your poor life, unless you’ve found a way to live free of the basic trappings of American life–running water, electricity and a credit rating–you’ll always be fretting over the fact that you’re scraping to get by. You’ll always be wanting more, even if only a little bit.

Most Americans find the condition of poverty to be intolerable. Just as the desire for happiness is ingrained in us, so is the desire for wealth.  Striving for the brass ring is as American as McDonald’s.  It’s in America’s billing and Press Kit. America is the Land of Opportunity. Owning property and being able to fulfill one’s financial dreams is The American Dream.  If one is wealthy s/he is ultimately free to indulge in all that life has to offer–even in life’s  inevitable sadness–but without the added feelings of inferiority that stem from not having all the things one is told s/he must have in order to be happy–a house, cars, a profession, a retirement fund, stock options maybe a spouse and some kids.

There is even something to be said for the virtues of sadness but this post has been long enough so I won’t go into it here…