Turtles of Happiness
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The other day I was chatting with someone special who hit me with the ultimate question.
You know, the kind of question you’d hear in a movie when a supercomputer has taken over the world and the hero saves the day by asking one question that melts the computer's brain into a little brick of cheese.
It’s the question that goes like this: “What’s the secret to happiness?” (AKA: "What is the meaning of life")
I considered the fundamental nature of the universe. I considered the human soul. I considered the power of love. I rifled through all of my memories, grasping for any enduring, solid handhold to break the fall down the elevator shaft of logic.
In that moment my questioner was upon me like a street-sweeper on a distracted pigeon.
Being more vigorous than the average pigeon, I fluttered about seeking something solid to hinder my pursuer.
Finally Stephen Hawking came within arm's reach, so I will throw him "under the bus":
"A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!""
-Hawking, Stephen (1988). A Brief History of Time. Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0553053401.
It is in our nature to wonder why. All of us wish to be happy (though we may define happiness differently), and it is natural to wonder "What makes me happy?" (so that we can get more of whatever that might be).
We ask what causes happiness, and what causes the cause, and what caused that, and so on until we find ourselves staring down an infinite column of turtles of happiness, extending as far as the mind's eye can see but not seeming to have any visible root.
The thing about happiness is that unlike astrophysics, which needs to be universally true, happiness is inherently personal and needs to be personally true.
For the old woman in Hawking's story the turtles were an equally believable and more useful explanation of her world. In terms of how it affected her day-to-day life the turtle example was equally if not more functional and hence was best for her.
We are fortunate to live in a time and place where we have the responsibility to create our own definition of happiness; I am thankful to have the choice.
(1) (picture credit: http://thecword.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/turtle.jpg )
