In
chapter two, Sissela Bok invokes the words of Fredrick Douglas—the African-American
social reformer, author, orator, and leader of the Abolishment Movement.
Fredrick Douglas, a man born into slavery only to escape, a man who experienced
the profound, poignant, and elative moment when he finally found himself beyond
the chains of slavery, when asked about his freedom, said the following:
“York, I said I felt as one might be
supposed to feel, on escaping from a den of hungry lions. But, in a moment like
that, sensations are too intense and too rapid for words. Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain,
may be described, but joy and gladness, like the rainbow of promise, defy alike the pen and pencil” (emphasis
mine).
Do you agree with
Douglas that experiential moments of bliss, joy, elation, happiness, et al are
beyond description, therefore making happiness difficult to objectively define?
Bok’s quote from
Fredrick Douglas skewed my thought in another direction, which drifted beyond the
scope of defining happiness. Douglas’s
quote made me reflect the first chapter’s take on luck—stemming from the
suggestion that we should be considered lucky to be born, a statement of which I
generally concur.
Although our
group discussion focused on the perspective that “we become who we are in part
by how we respond to the shifting circumstances which our lives delineate
themselves,” I wonder if this perspective would be possible if one’s “luck” was
to be born into slavery? “Shifting
circumstances”—or the lack thereof—would be an understatement. Sure, one could throw on the stoic’s armor of
Seneca or Epictetus, but Bok’s previous thought seems to ring hollow in light
of great oppression: “It makes no sense, from such a perspective, to settle into
the rut of blaming parents, society, or fate for the course one’s life has
taken; or to feel locked into some particular mold that nothing can crack
open.” Maybe it’s the metaphorical
abandonment of the phrase “locked into some particular mold” that falls short.
Although I’ve
all but given up on finding some universally profound quote to save all of
humanity, I stumbled across this one from William James: “The greatest use of
life is to spend on something that will outlast it.” Even though Fredrick Douglas escaped his
bondage, sadly, that was an isolated case. Today, many are faced with a much
more subtle form of social bondage, e.g., unemployment, under-employment, sickness,
racism, discrimination, etc., which is often a barrier for many to literally
survive—when life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness descends beyond the grasp
of humanity.
I would venture
to say that we all have experienced some difficulty in life or know someone who
is presently in impossible circumstances—circumstances where there’s a will but
not a way. It’s hard to look on the
bright side of life when you’re literally or figuratively tied to the whipping
post—or as the expression goes: as luck would have it.
