What is happiness?

What is happiness?

Happiness has always been the emotion that people want to feel by doing what they love, being who they want to be or simply by being loved by someone. Sometimes happiness is a goal that people achieve by doing simple things like taking care of someone, listening to their favourite song or by saying “I love you” to someone.

However, there are other situations in which people does not feel happy, but they care so much about what other people might think that they create a mask to show them a different world. This mask is part of an illusion created to show others that nothing is missing in their lives, that they are complete and full of success.  

This last issue can be seen explicitly shown on the play “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf” by Edward Albee, as the protagonists, Martha and George, at the beginning are a seemingly happy couple returning from a party, but just crossing the front door of their home changes it all. They treat each other with resentment and prejudice, even more when Nick and Honey arrive from the same party to continue it on Martha and George’s home, however, Albee captured this issue with “jokes”, because that way it was not taken with so much seriousness, as plays are used to show mundane situations with a note of comedy.

Martha and George’s first bad treatments could be seen on this part of the play:

“Martha (braying). I DON'T BRAY!

George (softly). All right... you don't bray.

Martha (hurt). I do not bray.

George. All right I said you didn't bray.

Martha (pouting). Make me a drink.

George. What? Martha (still softly). I said, make me a drink.

George (moving to the portable bar). Well, I don't suppose a nigthcap'd kill either one of us.

Martha. A nightcap! Are you kidding? We've got guests.”

It is told that Martha treats George with resentment as she feels disappointed of him, as he has not accomplished anything compared to her father, a person who Martha looks up to. So that’s why she takes advantage of the “after party” that she was having in her living room, to show her discontent with her life and with her husband.

When the mask it is not useful

I have reflected upon the issue of what Sylvia Plath lived, as I mentioned before being successful in something might make people happy, but in her case this might not had been true. Moreover, this in fact might had put more pressure on her emotional state that she could not resist.             

It was easily to perceive that her emotions where not really positive or “happy”, even before reading her biography, just reading her poems you could notice the lack of vitality in her.

Maybe even Plath tried to put on a mask to show everybody that she was fine and that she was enjoying her literary success. But it was noticeable her unhappiness with the world in the poem 

“Lady Lazarus” that she talked about her suicide attempts.

“And I a smiling woman.

I am only thirty.

And like the cat I have nine times to die.”

(…)

“Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.

The first time it happened I was ten.

It was an accident.

The second time I meant

To last it out and not come back at all.

I rocked shut

As a seashell.

They had to call and call

And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.”

For me, the fact that she wanted to kill herself was because of her unhappiness towards everything since her father died, even thought she was extremely smart and had a very successful work life. Other subject that affected Plath’s state was her difficult relationship with her ex-husband, Ted Hughes.

As we saw, people might hide their unhappiness from other people to look like they have everything figure out or fulfill, and sometimes people does not even bother to cover up their sorrow, but even more, they show it to everyone, as Sylvia Plath did.

So, if you are not happy, do you hide it or do you show it to everyone?