Be Happy

"The Things that Make us Happy

Make us Wise." (Crowley 22).

This quote from John Crowley's Little Big stopped me dead in my tracks while reading.  Especially in the reading for a college class - where we are supposed to be gaining wisdom, but do not associate it with happiness - I was unsure what to make of it.  

It brought up three questions:

1. What is happiness?

2. What is wisdom and how does is vary from knowledge?

3. How does happiness create wisdom?

So I guess the first step is to figure out what is happiness.  At this point it would be easy to jump to the dictionary definition, but it is too broad.  There are so many types of happiness; one can be joyful, excited, gleeful, blissful, ecstatic, pleased, and the list just goes on and on.  Therefore, I suppose the question of "What is happiness?" might just be a bit too broad.  

However, I do believe we can then ask the different question of what makes us happy?  I think it is safe to say that happiness comes with non-material goods.  Looking back on my life, I find, and I hold this to be true for humanity as a whole, that true happiness comes with interactions.  Whether these interactions are between people or with the environment or with some sort of challenge being faced, it is what pushes us and we are able to overcome and grow that makes us truly happy.  That can be a friend just being there for you and having a good laugh.  It can be reaching the top of a mountain in spite of its steep terrain.  It can be finally solving that math problem you have been staring at for days.  It is when we are challenged and growing through success that we find true, lasting happiness.  Material goods can help us on our way and be a tool to be happy, but ultimately they cannot push us and encourage us in the way that others and ourselves can.

This then leads to the question of wisdom.  I distinguish between wisdom and knowledge and wisdom in the way that wisdom has to do with understanding, whereas knowledge is recitation of fact.  As August puts it in Little, Big, "Now knowledge was there to be had, real knowledge, knowledge of how the world operates and what must be done to operate it.  Operate" (Crowley 102).  August is out to know, but he lacks the curiosity to understand what it is that way.  In my opinion, knowledge is comprised of fact, and wisdom goes deeper than the facts to discover how they work together and why it is.

So how do the things that make us happy also make us wise?  Experience.  It is the experiences that make us happy that also make us wise.  In doing the things that make us happy (as discussed above), we create a greater understanding of the workings of the world because we are experiencing them first hand.  In addition, when something makes us happy, we are naturally drawn to it and want to know more about it in hopes of maximizing our happiness, and, therefore, discover more about it and its inner-workings and begin to understand it, growing wiser.  However, sometimes our understanding boils down to the appreciation that it cannot be fully understood, and there we are wise in learning the vastness of the world and the limits of our own human minds.  

I believe it all boils down to experience.  It is what Dr. Bramble seeked in regards to the fairies, a first hand experience, and yet he could not get it.  Therefore, he knew some facts from Violet, but he failed to appreciate the whole existence because he could not see for himself.  He has knowledge, but not wisdom.  In the end, happiness is an outcome of experience, and an advocate for more experience, so the things that make us happy allow for a deeper understanding that makes us wise.