13. Who Could Be Called a Happy Being
Isadora Duncan (1878-1927) refused to marry Paris Singer, heir to the Singer Sewing Machine company because she was not sure she could tolerate a settled life.
Although she bore three children, all out of wedlock and one was fathered by Paris Singer.
The American-born dancer and choreographer was a pioneer of modern contemporary dance, even credited to have invented modern dance.
She could not tolerate to live a settled life because like others she too was in search of happiness – being sure that happiness will elude her if she is settled.
She preferred to spend long days and nights in the studio seeking that dance which might be the divine expression of the human spirits through the medium of the body’s movements. And it gave her happiness.
So, there is no single, universally accepted definition of happiness.
Someone has rightly said that to fall in love with yourself is the first secret to happiness. I feel happiness cannot be defined because it is a subjective matter.
It is a multifaceted emotion, never in singular. It is not always a positive life experience.
Sometimes we feel happy without any apparent external cause. An emotion comes spontaneously and even we are surprised.
Medical science attributes happiness to well-being and overall life satisfaction which is directly associated with better physical and mental health and a strong social relationship.
Social relationship and a settled life are entirely two different aspects. A settled life means there is a discipline.
A bohemian lifestyle is associated strongly with socially unconventional person, but even that person also lives in the same society, and has relationships at different level with different individuals. No one lives in a vacuum.
Although even for Duncan, not every day could be a joyous communion with art, sometimes she looked back on her life and was filled only with a great disgust and a feeling of utter disgust and a feeling of utter emptiness.
“I have met many great artists and intelligent and so-called successful people in my life, but never one who could be called a happy being, although some have made a very good bluff of it,” she wrote, “behind the mask, with any clairvoyance, one can divine the same uneasiness and suffering.”
From Duncan’s life I have arrived at a solution that happiness is just a state of mind. And mind is quiet once we have a sense of purpose.
To live for that purpose and to achieve that goal the journey we follow provides us a feeling of fulfillment. And that feeling of fulfillment is real happiness.
(Top Photo: Isadora Duncan in a dance mudra. She is famous for composing a dance routine called Varshavianka to the tune of the Polish revolutionary song known in English as Whirlwinds of Danger.)