“Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.”
~ Albert Schweitzer
I’d say that happiness was a little more than that, but this quote still rings with a kind of truth to me. Keep yourself healthy and forget the things that upset you, and being happy becomes much easier.
Perhaps there’s always something a little sad about remembering, despite how important it can be not to forget.
I was listening to my Chinese music collection today, and although I love many of the songs, nearly all of them left a bittersweet aftertaste. My dad once told me that so much of traditional Chinese music and many older Chinese songs are sad because the history of the Chinese people has been full of suffering. Of course, many people from cultures all over the world have gone through their fair—and unfair—share of hardships, but I suppose you really rack up the numbers when your history is as long as that of China.
In comparison, American history takes almost no time at all. It was one of my cousin’s favorite topics in history class because it only took them one day to cover it in Taiwan.
It’s ironic that it’s all these trials both in history and in our own lives that provide us with the material we need to write good stories.
As someone with less-than-ideal health and a tendency to ruminate about past mess-ups, I definitely know what Schweitzer means.
ReplyDeleteThis post's last sentence relates to a thought that I've had before. Almost all entertaining fiction depends on some kind of conflict. Most humor involves making fun of human weaknesses and vices. In a perfect world—a world with no violence, crime, deceit, jealousy, greed, disease, etc.—it seems there would be very little material for humor and fiction. Does that mean it's better that the world contains at least a little badness? I doubt it, but I sometimes wonder.
Well, I certainly don't think it's a good thing. And just because a life makes a good story definitely doesn't mean we want to live it.
DeleteGuess I'm a little weird in a way too because I often like nice, peaceful stories that are just about living everyday life.
I did notice that a lot of my grandmother's jokes involve bad things happening to people, but I personally have never enjoyed that kind of humor. I don't think humor has to come from the darker aspects of life. Most of what I like tends to revolve around twists in language, double meanings, etc.