In the spirit of full disclosure, I was not a fan of Whitney Houston's music. My musical tastes were, and remain, an indecipherable mash up of the mystical and wrenching tones of Sigur Ros sharing iPod space with Lady Gaga confections. I know Houston's songs, of course. One couldn't have been a U.S. citizen through the 80's and not have her amazing voice jostling around in your head, instantly retrievable and unshakable.
She was one of thousands who have already this year shut their eyes for the last time, whether in a bath tub or a cardboard box somewhere no one usually looks. They have all tried to turn down the unhappiness using something or other, or many somethings. Clearly, to paraphrase Tolstoy, each is unhappy in their own way, but there are always the same words applied at the end: self-doubt, demons, and destruction. They spoke them about Whitney this week. They spoke them about my brother who was put into the ground at 24 years old, his body already broken by what he did to himself in order not to feel--at the end so numb that he laid down with someone with a mental illness, who also happened to have a knife.
I have learned that happiness is not a soft thing, a visitation by the occasional good-fortune fairy. Happiness, if it is authentic and self-emanating, is muscular and watchful. It does not leave itself to a strangers care, much less the tricks of trifles like money and stuff. It looks carefully, makes its choices, knows how to place a bet and walk away when it lost, learning what didn't work. It knows how to defend itself--kick ass and take names, as we used to stay in the projects. It likes good leather and walking shoes.
I have seen the wreckage, and I've seen it narrowly missed, far more up close than I'd ever expected. And that miss was not simply because my beloved put the bottle down, but because he let something else in. The Prayer-Book of the Episcopal Church uses the phrase, "and iron entered his soul." Not one to quote scripture, I do have to shout out to that one: Exactly! He learned the shackles of addiction were nothing compared to the iron inside him, but that he would have to watch out. That his happiness was, in fact, life or death, and his were the hands on the wheel.
And it's life or death for all of us. Maybe not a physical death, but certainly a spiritual one. But first we better stop thinking about happiness on par with a shopping spree. We all know easily enough what really makes us happy, once we get ourselves past the material crap and the romance novels disguised as self-help books. It's not enough to find your bliss. You have to defend it. Start any time. That's the cool thing about it. You hold the starting gun.
