Sometimes I fantasize that I call a therapist with some fake emergency that makes them drop whatever they’re doing and literally run out in the middle of a session, then sneak into their office, and take their place next to a patient who never stopped talking and didn’t even realize about the switch. And listen. And respond. And interact. And pace the room and have a conversation and argue about stuff. Their stuff. But also mine. And heal them completely. Like, they finish talking, stand, and everything bad in their head is gone forever. And, by reflection, everything bad in my head is gone forever. And we just shake hands and say goodbye.
This is a recurring fantasy. It doesn’t have to be a therapist, although that’s preferable. A recurring subject in a recurring fantasy. Maybe because psychotherapy involves talking and listening and understanding, and these things are valuable to me. Sometimes it’s a doctor, one of those you go to for bad stuff. Like an oncologist. And so in this case the fantasy is similar: I make up an excuse to pull them out of their job and somehow get into their office and start talking to their patient myself, instead of them. Only in this case the patient realizes something’s odd. But they keep going anyway. And magically healing happens right there, just by having a conversation. And I too immediately feel much better. Again, handshakes and goodbyes.
Imagine if that were true. I could eradicate all sorts of diseases just by talking about them. It would be like an exorcism by conversation. The mere act of letting words simply flow out of sick bodies via an exchange of ideas and thoughts and opinions, would heal them. And people would be happy again (or just for the first time, who knows), and I would be so happy that they’re happy. Seeing people regain their best selves thanks to me would make me ecstatic and honored and proud and very, very emotional. I’d just weep nonstop, and laugh, and weep and laugh at the same time. And the best part would be that I’d be content with just thinking that I’ve made someone happy. I wouldn’t want any money or recognition or special status or what have you.
I don’t fantasize about making people happy with presents, by magically being able to give them material things that they want. That’s surely a form of happiness, for some. But there’s this passage in Elif Batuman’s Either/Or that resonates strongly:
“Everything you want right now, everything you want so passionately and think you’ll never get—you will get it someday. I accidentally met her eyes, and it felt like she was talking to me. Yes, you will get it, she said, looking right at me, but by that time, you won’t want it anymore. That’s how it happens.”
It’s always been like that for me. Maybe because, once I get something that I’ve longed for so hard, I instantly realize that, after all, it doesn’t have the impact on my life that I thought it’d have. And I grow indifferent to it, to the point of not wanting it anymore. And the (already vague) thought that it would somehow make me happy vanishes, or perhaps doesn’t even show up in the first place. So my idea of happy is not about having things (houses, cars), not even having non-things (power, status). It’s not really about having. It might be about longing to have, about the process of desiring, but that disappointed me so many times already.
The only idea of happiness that consistently works for me is making someone happy. Or just knowing that someone I care for is happy. It’s happiness by reflection. Borrowed happiness. And that’s all I need: borrowing back a little of the happiness that I’d help generate, or that someone I love has. I’m not saying that I make people happy, or that I know how to make people happy. I wouldn’t have a clue. If I did, I’d probably be God. What I’m saying is that there have been (few) times in my life when I was capable of making someone happy. And even though I have no idea how and why it happened, it just did. And I was happy that it did and realized that the only way I can be really, predictably, genuinely happy is when -- by pure chance or divine intervention or I don’t know what -- I make others happy.
Maybe this is why I fantasize about healing people and, by reflection, myself. Healing is certain and tangible and indisputably linked to happiness. Healing isn’t controversial, it’s objective and real and recognizable. And when you heal, you’re happy. It couldn’t be otherwise. Getting out of a disease has to make you happy. The one between healing and happiness is probably the strongest causal relationship there is. And so, in my fantasies, I heal others. And the minute they realize they’re well, they’re happy. And their happiness heals me, and makes me happy.
Clearly, fantasies reveal desires. And besides the ultimate desire to be happy by making others happy, my healing fantasies reveal that I aim to do that by talking, by engaging in conversation. Whenever I catch myself thinking about this, I also think about the healing power of language. The “Infinite use of a finite means”, as I’ve heard someone say. And that if there’s one meager chance of making a human I know feel better is by unconditionally giving myself, and listening and genuinely worrying about what troubles them, what causes their unhappiness, and using the power of words and empathy and closeness to try and help.
Maybe it’s all so utopian, like a fantasy should be. But for me the only real source of (lasting) happiness is seeing others happy. And it’s not about being altruistic, or selfless. This is not charity. I don’t seek other people's happiness by sacrificing mine. It’s about my happiness.
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This SPOKE to me. Woah.
With this comment I won't be able to exhaust everything I wanted to say, lately I've been building great speeches and then the words seem to get stuck and not want to come out anymore, and if they do come out, they're disconnected.
Borrowed happiness. What a great concept, what a great feeling. I work pretty much like this too, as you managed to describe. I have countless episodes in which I have experienced this happiness, small attentions, those times in which I stopped to listen, to help (and not great things: from picking up a stick to a gentleman in the early morning when the morning routine is not yet started, to the child who doesn't get to get the candy from the bar counter). Which is true is not altruism, probably indeed it could be the most marked expression of selfishness because you know that afterwards you will feel an unjustified joy, without all those logical diatribes. The fact is, that some days it's my only salvation, capable of making me see the good in all the little things when it's often lacking in big things.
I don't think it's a common feeling though. It's empathy. Or sixth sense, perceiving the other who is different from you but who understand in a nano second that with a gesture you could eventually change his life, and perhaps first of all your day. But looking around me, I think it happens more often that someone rejoices in the unhappiness of others, because almost always today it means that an advantage has derived from this at the expense of the other. Maybe it's also something that grows over time or from vicissitudes, a path of sensitivity. I don't know, but I shared every step of this essay.
Now you will already be taken by the next article that I can't wait to read, on limited time and things to do (you know I'm always in a rush), I will. Because it makes me delighted 😉