The unequivocal truth is that all people want to be happy. We all want it, yet the knowledge of how to be happy often escapes us. Why is attaining happiness so elusive — is there some lost, esoteric art to being happy? Is there some humanity-wide conspiracy gatekeeping our joy? Although it would be an amusement to go on a Da Vinci Code-style pursuit for a secreted-away scroll with all answers, the reality is actually a lot closer to hand.
I
WHAT WE OFTEN THINK OF AS HAPPINESS
We have been conditioned to identify the wrongs things as being able to inch us closer to — or outright give us — happiness. Our gaze has veered off course towards commodities and contrivances. The clothes, cars, new tech, wealth, societal roles and careers we glorify merely satisfy us in an artificial way. They are to true happiness as meal replacement smoothies are to real food. For a time, they can offer us the illusion of satisfaction, but the artifice wears off. And when it does, we realise we were never truly satisfied — only pacified.
This observation is no modern phenomenon. In time spanning millennia of worldwide cultures, this has been one of the pervasive issues. Written in 523 AD, Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy draws heavily from the Classical Greek — and his contemporary Roman — tradition, as he attempts to tease away the obfustications, and allow for the natural light of reason to show us our path towards happiness. This journey begins with his deft, hardline distinction between ‘fortune’ and ‘happiness’.
II
WHAT IS FORTUNE?
When we think of fortune, we oft think of somebody who born into a middle-to-upper class family; plentiful opportunities presented to them, never having wanted for anything. We think of someone lucky — that no matter what they do, everything always seems to come up roses. Conversely — but related — when we think of misfortune, we think of the suffering and the destitute. The oppressed, politically or societally.
We see fortune as existing on a scale between Good fortune and Bad fortune. Those possessing the former find themselves in receipt of the objects or conditions conducive to our happiness. Those with the latter are thrust into difficult circumstances and hardship. But key for Boethius is that happiness and fortune exist separately — they are distinct from one another.
Within his framework, Fortune is the direct influence of the namesake goddess Fortuna — historically depicted blindfolded, with her trademark wheel of fortune. Much like the TV game show you’re correctly thinking about, she would spin her wheel, and in doing so would blindly grant grandeur and riches to some, and suffering and detriment to others.
III
SO IS THE WORLD GOVERNED BY RATIONAL PRINCIPLES, OR BY THE RANDOM CHANCE OF SOME GODDESS SPINNING HER WHEEL?
The world is ordered, but what we fail to recognise is that Fortune is a part of that order. Those who have benefitted greatly from the favours of Fortune begin to think themselves favoured by her. And so, when Fortune puts them up on a pedestal, and subsequently lays them low, they feel hard done by. If she takes back the gifts she bestows, it is felt to be an injustice.
This is where Boethius believes we demonstrate a failure in our understanding of the way things work.
We wrongly expect that things should be fair over unfair, be just over unjust, or provide us with fortune over misfortune. Fortune’s role is not to pump out material wealth and worldly pleasures. Her job is not to nourish us solely with the sides of the dichotomies we want, and abstain from the sides that we don’t want. Both sides of those dichotomy are the order. Truly, there can be no misfortune, as her nature is both give and take — to be consistent in her inconsistency.
For those who have experienced little of Fortune’s favours, it is they who understand her best. The gifts of Fortune aren’t bestowed on account of desert, but arbitrarily. We can never earn them. Our virtue and hard work doesn’t make us more deserving of them. Moreover, the gifts of Fortune aren’t even gifts — they’re loans! And Lady Fortune can repossess them at her own whim.
Boethius warns us to be aware of this. He says if we desire the gifts of Fortune, we have to be prepared to play by her rules. When we rely upon the gifts of Fortune, we enter into a tacit agreement: these goods may be taken from us at any time. Our favours never change. Well, not in a way contrary to the agreement. The contract we sign is the acceptance that our fortune WILL change; she will loan us worldly goods, and will recall them just as quickly.
To complain about Fortune taking back what is hers is like yelling at the tide for going out. We never possess the things Fortune hands to us. Such is the capricious nature of Fortune.
IV
BUT CAN’T THESE FORTUNE-GIVEN, EARTHLY GOODS BE ’GOOD’ WHILST WE HAVE THEM?
It isn’t just the capricious nature of Fortune which leads to the dismissal of these earthly goods as happiness-conducive. Boethius demonstrates how they themselves — and in relation to one another — often lead to more distress, or stray us further away from attaining happiness:
- The attainment of wealth oft leads to avarice; the insatiable, dragon-like compulsion to accumulate more wealth, and fervently guard that which you have.
- Honour and respect is much often given on account of one’s social station, or the distinction attached to their career. Neither the fortune of noble birth, nor position, grant an individual the virtue and wisdom that the honours received implies them to possess. When we believe ourselves worthy of the honour we receive, we stop believing we need to cultivate the implied virtues.
- Fame is subject to the fickle whim of human opinion, and is just as inconsistent as Fortune herself. It is the empty, selfish and fleeting yearning to be remembered by those who we will never know. And as all knowledge and history fades into antiquity, so do all the endeavours of fame.
- The earthly good of beauty is as empty as fame. The desire for it, simply indulgent.The desire to be desired. People wish to possess beautiful things: flowers, gemstones, delicately crafted clothing. The earthly good of beauty begets in others the desire to possess us. Not for any element of our character, but merely for the way we appear. It reduces us from our complex humanity, into mere ornaments.
- And power. The time-old, corrupting force. Many of the above, if not all, are pursued in the greater pursuit of power. Whether power itself, or the conveying of it.
These are not simply the social critiques and musings of a bitter or jealous man, who never got his moment in the sun. Boethius had each of the above favours of fortune. Born into the wealthy ruling class of Rome, grandson of a senator, son of a consul, well-educated in the historically-renown hub of knowledge and culture Alexandria. He would grow to hold various important positions of office throughout his career, including those of both his father and grandfather.
He was well-acquainted with Fortune, as for much of his life he appeared to have her favour. But once accused of treason, sentenced to exile from Rome, imprisoned without trial, and finding himself stripped of his titles and wealth, he soon came to realise that she holds no favourites.
When Boethius shows us the folly and treachery of Fortune’s goods, he isn’t pointing to other dignitaries and leaders and cash-rich Romans. He’s talking about himself. He believed himself to be happy, as he possessed all the things everybody wanted. As they were stripped from him, one by one in quick succession, he realises just how bereft he is. He becomes acutely aware of himself in a state of deprivation. Not just of his wealth, nor his influence, nor his renown, nor his family, but of his happiness.
See, when a worldly good is taken from us, so are the feelings they elicit. But true happiness is inalienable.
Quid me felicem totiens iactastis amici. Qui cecidit stabili non erat ille gradu.
BOETHIUS
Why, my friends, did you ever think me happy? He who falls low never did firmly stand.
V
CAN I REALLY NOT WANT ANY OF THESE THINGS?
Now, naturally, — and much more practically — I am not merely advocating we forego all worldly goods. In the hyper-consumerist, social media-driven world we live in, it would be a Sisyphean task to embark upon. What I am saying is not to root our happiness, or sense of life satisfaction, in these things — nor define ourselves by them. We should treat these favours as preferred indifferents. Leased gifts which often assist in a natural life well lived, but neither contribute to nor detract from our ability to attain happiness.
The possession of these indifferents — be it wealth, renown, noble birth, health, beauty — and their opposites of poverty, obscurity, ignoble birth, illness, unbecomingness — do not determine the virtue of an individual. It is how these preferred or unpreferred indifferents are used which contribute to a happy, or unhappy life.
If it can be enjoyed, enjoy it as it comes. But once we relinquish our need to rely on fickle favours, we open ourselves up to the ability to replace these with true, inalienable goods and virtues; ones which our truly our own.
VI
SO, HOW DO I ATTAIN HAPPINESS?
The truth is that happiness is not elusive.
At the risk of sounding contrived, happiness is something which comes from within us. We are sold the lie (in this modern consumer crazy culture, often literally) that happiness exists outside of us – in the hands of others. Whether that’s on account of businesses trying to monopolise on our humanity, or the powers that be attempting to estrange us from our freedoms, is a matter for a different essay. But the fact remains that this untruth has stopped a great many of us from turning inward, and unveiling the revelation they long sought after.
Movements like minimalism and digital nomadry demonstrate how revelations and realisations are still allowing people to chart a course to happiness, and a life lived to their own ends; seizing personal freedom from the clutches of materialism, reclaiming of time for vagrancy and adventure. This is proof enough that the awareness of there being something amiss in the current blueprint for happiness is not something completely obscured to us — we’re just looking in the wrong direction. It just takes some time to look inward, and reflect on how we wish to live this life.
