The Happiness Myth_ An Expose - Jennifer Hecht [19]
A great filmmaker gets a rotten review and mourns over it because, though it couldn’t compromise the career’s greatness, it is today’s news. You, meanwhile, are not a great filmmaker, and though that can be a drag on some nights as you wait for sleep, you do not have to manage all those short narcissistic rushes occasioned by fame, and you do not have to cope with a terrible review all about what you’ve spent the last three years pouring your life into, right there on the front of the arts section of the Times. Fame can be nice, but it is not the simple confirmation that it appears to be. Aurelius had numerous reminders for himself on this topic:
But perhaps the desire of the thing called fame will torment thee. See how soon everything is forgotten, and look at the chaos of infinite time on each side of the present, and the emptiness of applause, and the changeableness and want of judgment in those who pretend to give praise, and the narrowness of the space within which it is circumscribed, and be quiet at last. For the whole earth is a point, and how small a nook in it is this thy dwelling, and how few are there in it, and what kind of people are they who will praise thee.3
If you are content with being a lawyer, nurse, teacher, or bridge builder for a living, there is no need for the hot pursuit of your own renown. So forget fame, say all the famous men. There’s the rub. All our remembered bards of rejecting fame are, by definition, remembered. In some cases, for over two thousand years. What that suggests to me is that, like so many other things, you have got to live through fame to know why it is not heaven. They know that even the greatest star spends time bored, tired, or unable to sleep, and the periods of adulation may make mundane life more difficult to tolerate. The happiest you can be is how you are once fame has failed you and you have taken that in. The wise say if you want fame, try to get it, because it is worth something, but it won’t be what you expected. The people you most wanted to impress may so resent your new status that you lose them entirely. You wanted to impress them because of how they were always impressing you, and that may be the only relationship with you they want. As for impressing the people of the future, Aurelius said, “See that you secure this present time to yourself: for those who rather pursue posthumous fame do not consider that the men of tomorrow will be exactly like these whom they cannot bear now.”4
A big part of happiness comes from keeping friends and family and not hating those you work with, which means forgiving them despite your immediate desire, sometimes, to stay angry and hold out for recompense. There is no formula for knowing when relationships should end and sometimes it is right to keep a person in your heart but not see them anymore. But one of the most common ways in which people get estranged is that their feelings get hurt by something someone said in anger or behind their back. For this, you are better off letting go of your pain and anger and leaving the whole thing in the past. Not easy, but Marcus Aurelius offers nine rules for coping. They are:
Think about what your relationship to this person is, and whether you are his or her superior.
Think about who this person is “at the table, in bed, and so forth: and particularly, under what compulsions of opinion they operate.”
Remember that they can’t be happy about acting the way they do, and they must be acting involuntarily, through ignorance.
“Consider that you also do many things wrong, and…even if you do abstain from certain faults still you have the disposition to commit them” and that you hold back only because you’re scared to try or you’re worried about what people would say.
Recall that “you do not even understand whether men are doing wrong or not,” since we rarely have enough information to judge others.
Think about how “the man’s life is only a moment, and after a short time we are all laid out dead.”
Realize that no one else’s behavior