Happiness as a work of art

Klimt’s canvas makes you think about the great secret of the birth of happiness. And also about the sacrament of how it is transmitted and how future joys are prepared. Happiness as an inheritance and as a promise is what this scene is about.

Finding happiness means, perhaps, just finding it again. In what distant memories does this complex and elusive feeling, which is called happiness, originate?

The psychological theory of imprinting states that certain periods in a person’s life are especially favorable for the perception of certain knowledge. For example, languages: if we often heard foreign speech in early childhood, then it will be easier to master the language. Also, the language of happiness is more accessible to us if it was familiar to us in the first years of our life.

What if the same is true of happiness itself? What if childhood happiness allows you to later find an adult – in its most diverse manifestations? In these very early impressions, which are inexpressible in words, are the keys to the future capacity for happiness, the ability to feel happy.

If we have received this inoculation of bliss as early as possible, we already have a chance. And with it comes the duty: not to miss it, because happiness has yet to be created. Well, to those who did not have such a chance, there is only one thing left: to get down to business yourself.

Vincent van Gogh’s Lesson: Look to the Sky

“Happiness comes entirely from moments of grace. Stop, shut up. Watch, listen, breathe. Admire”

Striving upward, into the blue. Almond blossoms reach for the sky. And nothing else: only the whiteness of the petals and the azure sky. Like the embodiment of happiness, strong and fragile, like life.

Exhausted by internal discord and mental illness, Van Gogh makes a dizzying, amazing leap and focuses on the main thing: on the impulse of life to the beyond, to heaven. He paints a picture, raising his eyes to the sky, not seeing anything else around. He removes from it any landscape, any additional information, even a tree trunk, in order to speak only about this unity of opposites: colors and sky, white and blue, transient and eternal, earthly and heavenly…

In the same way, he eliminated – but did not erase – his own suffering at that moment, in order to forever preserve and convey to us the feeling of happiness at the sight of flowering almonds.

According to evolutionary psychologists, many of our actions and attachments are remnants of our “animal” needs. People appreciate the beauty of the natural landscape so much – admiring the river framed by trees, or the coast bathed in the sun – because this landscape promises them food, rest, the opportunity to recuperate – everything that a person needs to survive …

However, in addition to pleasure, nature also awakens a vague, dark, deep feeling of belonging to a single world order that embraces us and surpasses our understanding.

That is why we do not just observe nature or even admire it. In fact, we become involved in it, approaching our primary essence as living beings. Whether we contemplate a flowering tree, whether we are absorbed in the movement of waves or clouds, we plunge into nature, return to it.

… Every time we inhale the aroma of a meadow or a forest, a distant echo of this happiness of “finding nature” sounds in us. Encounters with nature not only nourish happiness – without them it is impossible … Fragility and strength, rooted in life and striving for the beyond.

These traits of nascent happiness are the most important, but also the most subtle. There is nothing easier than trampling them or not noticing them. The picture opens our eyes to beauty and fragility… and also to their absolute necessity for our existence.

The Lesson of Gaston Chessac: Work on Your Happiness

“Only we ourselves can lead this struggle for bright feelings in our souls, we alone can prefer happiness to misfortune”

Happiness is what? State of mind? Mind work? Decision, effort, desire? Or a structure that we build inside ourselves? Most often – all together, provided that there is a minimum of material prerequisites necessary for its occurrence.

On the one hand, this is good: our happiness depends on ourselves. But at the same time, it’s bad: if so, we ourselves are responsible for it. We are required to work on it, to make efforts.

This warped figure – without arms, without legs, with an ugly but radiant face – is a kind of distorted mirror into which its creator, Gaston Chessac, looks.

This ill-healthy melancholic reminds us that happiness is never, or almost never, given for free, just like that. But on the other hand, it is always accessible to the mighty human mind. A wide smile, full of strength and generous trust; mocking, attentive and, most importantly, eyes wide open to the world. The man in the picture reminds us of the main thing: we have the ability to achieve happiness. For some, this is a talent, for others it is the result of a struggle, but happiness is available to everyone …

Where did the strange conventional wisdom come from that happiness should be spontaneous? And that efforts aimed at achieving it lead nowhere or even harm? Why is the conscious pursuit of happiness subject to such criticism?

The punishment sent by God to Adam – to earn your bread by the sweat of your face – also meant: you will earn joys in the sweat of your face.

Happiness is not an accident, but a way of thinking that can be learned and developed. It is often said that life is a struggle. Happiness is also a struggle, especially for those who were not spoiled by life at first.

Whatever our weaknesses—whether they be physical imperfections in our body or wounds from our past, our anxieties and blues—they invariably give us plenty of reasons not to be happy.

But if one day we state that things are always exactly like this: there are people happier than me, and there are more unhappy, then under what pretext will we then endlessly complain about our bitter lot? This position of the offended life of the victim is all the more dangerous because it can turn us into untouchables, to whom no one dares to approach to prompt or help with advice. Which will exacerbate our loneliness and our weaknesses. And in the end it will still bring us back to ourselves.

It is impossible to experience happiness all the time. But you can always take care to leave the door open in case he returns.

The lesson of Gustave Courbet: happiness in this moment

“Maybe this is happiness? To tell myself one day: no matter what happens to me next, even just for the sake of this moment it was already worth living.

The traveler returned to his land to meet the sea. He followed this on foot. Not at random, but knowing exactly what he was looking for. He is not surprised by what he sees, and therefore his feelings are clearly even stronger. Before us is a restrained, hidden happiness from a meeting after separation.

I know this beach depicted by Courbet. I know very well. I used to spend every summer here as a kid. When we arrived on the first day of vacation, I raced to the dunes and climbed them to see the sea.

It is truly beautiful – this is a greeting to the sea, embodied in the colors of Courbet. A wave of the hand that says “I recognize you, I adore you, I honor you… And I’m so happy!”

How right the artist was when he sang this moment. Showed him, gave him life with his brush. And we are just as right whenever we are aware of our happy moments, we call them by name. There is one childishly magical phrase that we can and should say to ourselves every time bliss has touched us: “Yes, this is a moment of happiness.”

Realize and then acknowledge your happiness. In doing so, we partake of eternity. No, happiness itself will not last forever. But it will forever remain true that in our life there was this happy moment.

Someone may object: why consciously make so much effort in order to feel happiness? Won’t they spoil the whole thing, destroy its immaterial, elusive nature? Why is it necessary to call words, always inaccurate and misleading, such subtle and changeable sensations? The answer is simple: because to live is not only to feel and experience, but also to create the world that will be yours.