Can You Be Happy Without Being Good?

Or in other words, can you be good without needing to also feel happy about it?

The house is holding its breath again.

Or maybe it’s just me. Her breathing has met her vent at its usual rhythm of 16 cycles per minute. A soft, synthetic sigh that cuts through the brown noise, but it’s the silence between the breaths that’s the loudest thing in the room. It’s that specific, pressurized hush that only exists in houses heavily modified for survival. It feels like the air has thinned, like I’m standing on a mountain peak where the oxygen is too scarce or too precious to chatter on about the old stories I used to tell myself. And yet chatter I will…

I’ve been lying here for an hour.

Aimlessly staring at the ceiling, trying to untangle a knot. When I was younger I used to be pretty good at undoing knots. Other kids would always bring me their yo-yos whenever the strings would get tangled up. Tonight though, this particular knot happens to be between my heart and my head.

Who am I becoming in this?

Not the father I planned to be. That man is gone, buried under layers of insurance denials, medication schedules, and the terrifying, beautiful weight of a child who cannot hold herself up. I don’t miss him, not really. He was a stranger anyway, a fantasy of sunlit driveways and training wheels. But I’m not sure who has taken his place.

Someone told me the other day that I’m “so strong.” They said it with that bright, manic smile people wear when they’re terrified of the dark. They want me to be strong. They want me to be the oak tree that stands unbowed. At the very least they want me to think that they think I am strong like the oak. But I don’t feel like an oak. I feel like a spiderweb, trembling in the draft, knowing the wind is coming, knowing the threads will tear, and still, somehow, weaving.

And that’s where the question starts to itch.

If I am not happy does that mean I am doing this wrong? It certainly seems that way based on the reactions I get when I give an honest response to, “How are you?” If my life is objectively a tragedy, if the horizon is ruined and the air is thin, what’s the point? To choose joy and do what you can, cutoff whoever you need to, walk away from whatever you must, in order to be happy would seem to be the answer. But if all of that, if the word “happy” itself feels like a lie I’m telling myself to keep from screaming, can I still be a good person?

We are taught that goodness and happiness are married. That if you are good, the universe will eventually reward you with peace, with joy, with a life that makes sense. Can you, then, be profoundly, deeply good in the midst of a life that offers you no joy? What if the only thing left to do is to be good because there is so little joy?

I think about when we have to wash her hair in the sink. The grey adhesive from some hospital stay that won’t come out. The smell of solvent and the warmth of her scalp under my fingers. We scrub. We rinse. We do it again. We don’t do it because it makes us happy. It doesn’t. It’s tedious, exhausting, and often heartbreaking. We do it because she is here. Because she is ours. Because it is the right thing to do.

Is that enough? Is that the only thing that matters?

I feel a strange fear rising in my throat. Not fear of the future, or the next seizure, or the next bill. Fear of the possibility that I am wrong. That maybe I am just deluding myself, trying to find a philosophy to justify the pain. That maybe there is no “higher excellence” in this, just a slow, grinding erosion.

But then I look at her. She’s asleep, her chest rising and falling with the help of the machine. She looks so small. So fragile. Our lovely round baby girl has gotten so skinny. And yet, there is a dignity in her sleep that is almost a question. One that I don’t understand how to answer. I don’t have the words for it. I just know that the old language of “blessing” and “silver linings” has cracked and fallen away. I’m standing in the ruins, and the air is thin, and I’m trying to figure out how to breathe without pretending the sky is blue. Maybe that’s all there is. Just the breathing. Just the doing of the right thing, even when it hurts. Even when it doesn’t make me happy. Which makes me think we need to recalibrate the way we use the word ‘happy’.

When people talk about happiness they usually mean smiles, laughter, that warm fuzzy feeling. And they take for granted that this is the way things are supposed to be, that hardship and suffering are aberrations that must be relieved or diminished in order to get back to being happy. But how can that version of happiness be the natural state of things when so much of my life is not…that? I think there needs to be a reckoning that happiness is not our default condition, it isn’t a destination you arrive at, and it’s not a commodity you get. It is something that blooms out of a life lived being a good person. And the Good must come before the happiness.

I tell myself I’ll write this down later. When the sun comes up. When the glue is washed out. When I have a word for this feeling. Who am I kidding, the sun is already here, there is always more glue, and there are never the right words for things.

For now, I just hold her hand.

Until next time, stay safe, stay kind, and know that you are appreciated.

Cheers,

[kartoffelvater]

Thank you for reading. For those of you coming back, or for finding your way here for the first time—I’m so glad you’re here. We wouldn’t be here without you. Every bit of support helps and we appreciate it more than words can say!