On loneliness: is shared happiness double happiness?

What are success and happiness worth if you can’t share it with anyone? That question has occupied Univers editor Anne Grefkens for some time. ‘Although it is wonderful to have your own place without roommates making noise or messes, sometimes it is also quite lonely.’

In general, I am a happy person. I have a nice group of friends, my parents are healthy and I live in a nice apartment in the center of Tilburg. In addition, I enjoy my work a lot. My employer and clients regularly express their confidence. This ensures that career opportunities are flying around my ears. And, ambitious as I am, I seize them. One at a time and sometimes all at once.

Nothing to complain about, you might think.

It’s going well, but…

Yet the glass is half-empty more often than I would like. Despite having the wind in my sails regularly, I enjoy the small and big moments of success less. Not because I find it normal to have the wind in my sails, but because I cannot share the success moments directly with anyone. And that is new to me, because in past years there was always someone to share my happiness with.

For example, when I got my driver’s license years ago – I was still living at my parents’ house – they were the first to congratulate me. To celebrate success moments like getting my driver’s license, they invariably got a cream cake from the local bakery. With every bite of cake I slid down my throat, I tasted the pride, happiness and joy of the achievement on my tongue.

The same was true of my college days spent in various dorms. Even back then, there was always at least one roommate who knew what I was doing. Almost every week a glass was raised to an achievement, as all successes, big or small, were celebrated. ‘Shared happiness is double happiness,’ we shouted as our champagne, wine or Coke glasses clinked together.

‘As soon as a desire is satisfied, we are already longing for something new’

And that’s exactly where the shoe pinches these days. Because while it’s wonderful to have your own place without roommates making noise or messes, sometimes it’s also quite lonely. Who should you share success moments with when there’s no one who knows exactly what’s going on in your life? And what are those moments of success and happiness really worth if you can’t share them with anyone?

Pessimism

These questions regularly put me in a minor mood. Perhaps Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 – 1860) had it right after all. The German philosopher is known for his distinctly pessimistic worldview. According to him, people who pursue happiness are disappointed because happiness does not exist. There would only be pain and suffering in our meaningless existence. The world simply cannot satisfy our desires, he argues.

Of course, this does not sound very cozy. But there is a grain of truth in his philosophy. When Schopenhauer was thirty years old, he wrote the book The World as Will and Representation. In it he states that in all beings, including humans, there is a driving force: the Will. Your will causes you to do what you do. This is not free will, but a sum of motives and reasons for doing or not doing something.

In my case, my driving force is often my ambitious attitude to life: the desire to keep getting better at my craft and make a career. How do you get that done? Right, by working hard and seizing every opportunity that presents itself with both hands. But, according to Schopenhauer, this will never make you truly happy, because as soon as a desire is satisfied, we are already longing for something new.

‘With music, meditation or philosophy, we can put pain and suffering aside’

Does that sound recognizable? At least for me it does. Because my focus is mainly forward, I do not enjoy achieved results for long and after a short time I am already working on a new challenge.

So is there no glimmer of hope to be found in Schopenhauer’s philosophy at all? Fortunately, there is. By engaging in music, meditation or philosophy, for example, we can put pain and suffering aside. And although I don’t often find myself completely ‘zen’ in a difficult pose on a yoga mat, I do enjoy reading philosophical works and listening to music. So in a way – if Schopenhauer is to be believed – there is a way for me too to escape all misery.

I am because we are

Although Schopenhauer hits a nerve with his pessimistic view of the world, I am not completely convinced that he is right: in my eyes, the world is not just a vale of tears. Thinking back to my student days and the time when I still lived with my parents, it was not only the champagne and the cream cake that made me enjoy my moments of success. It was the people with whom I ate the cake and drank the champagne that made me enjoy them.

They saw up close how hard I had worked for something and recognized how much I had wanted it. They shared the relief that something actually succeeded. Conversely, I also thoroughly enjoyed their stories, emotions and moments of happiness. So is it perhaps wiser to abandon the pessimistic Schopenhauer and live more by the more positive Ubuntu philosophy?

Ubuntu is a humanistic philosophy from the southern part of Africa and revolves around a deep sense of mutual solidarity. The philosophy states that a person can only be happy when others are happy and that a person himself suffers when he sees another suffer. In this way, humanity is bound together.

The Zulus, South Africa’s largest ethnic group, hold that Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu: ‘Man is a man because of other men.’ In African tradition, this maxim has important religious connotations: a human being who is because of other people becomes an ancestor worthy of being honored or respected.

‘A person can only be happy if others are too’

While I don’t want to appropriate Ubuntu thought and the history it derives from, I do see the beauty in the life lessons you can draw from it. For example, my well-being does not improve when I would like to share my emotions and stories with someone, but come home to an empty house. A culture in which you can share everything: pain, sorrow, success and happiness, does. Not surprisingly, Ubuntu is translated as ‘I am because we are.’

Double happiness

A little more Ubuntu in my existence, therefore, will certainly enrich my life. Whereas before it was natural to share my stories and emotions with others, mostly because I lived under the same roof with them, nowadays I have to put in a little more effort myself. That is a bittersweet but realistic life lesson.

Therefore, perhaps I should go find a roommate, diligently search for a life partner or – if I don’t want to disregard Schopenhauer’s ‘advice’ – join a yoga or meditation class.

Shared happiness is and always will be double happiness, even in the yoga school.

Translated by Language Center, Riet Bettonviel