The Problems of Making People Happy

The biggest one of all is that I like to do it. I wouldn’t qualify myself as a pushover, but I will say that this semester I’ve missed out on doing things I wanted to because someone else wanted to do something else. When people ask me what I’d like, most of the time I honestly don’t mind. When it comes to music or food and even most activities I don’t mind which we do. It’s the fact of doing anything at all that I don’t always take to.

Sometimes I like to do nothing. Or rather things that are nothing to other people, but mean a bit of something to me. I like to read. I like to write and I like to sleep. But especially this semester I’ve been so often convinced that that is ‘nothing’ and that I ought to be doing ‘something’ while I’m in Paris, while I’ve got the chance. So when I want to read or write instead I go out, “enjoying” the city.

Except that the thing I’ve learned, the thing I’ve so exhaustively learned, is that to enjoy anything outside of yourself at all you’ve first got to enjoy yourself completely. And my self enjoys reading and writing and sleeping.

But this isn’t just a Paris thing; it’s not anything new that I do things with people when I’d rather do something (a very real something) else. I’ve been playing violin since I was four years old, but I’m not studying at the Paris Conservatory right now. I never practiced enough because back in the day practicing was ‘nothing.’ For a time, in those rebellious middle school years, I ignored my friends’ opinions and practiced when I liked instead of hanging out at the mall and going to the cinema and putting metal through unnatural holes in my body. I got really interested in jazz violin and taught enough/played enough to buy an electric 5-string violin/viola. I had the old Jamie Aebersold books and used my dad’s record player to play alongside.

At some point since then, I relapsed. I don’t know when this was, or how or why, but it must have happened as I am living evidence of it. This is a choice I seem to continually make; to please other people first. I cannot believe that it is a result of pressures, or if it is then it is a set of pressures I choose to bend to. I think.

I do like other people to be happy. That isn’t as selfless as it sounds—that just happens to be what makes me happy. I like people. It’s a weird sort of addiction, a fascination of sorts but one that I can’t stop. Are addictions bad if they aren’t destructive? Does intentionality matter?

In art, the author is removed from the meaning. The interpretation of and value given to an art object is between the object itself and the viewer. Intentionality is not a factor. And art is a likeness of life, no? It is reflects life; affects life; is an effect of life. By simple virtue of the artist being alive, art bears some relation to the living. So then does intentionality matter in life? Does it matter why I like to make people happy? I do not think I suffer from abnormally high levels of self-consciousness, or am in someway seeking approval or love. Or maybe I am; maybe that’s human nature. Maybe that’s the nature of art too. Even avant-garde art wants to be hated by a few in order that it may be loved by many others.

Perhaps giving up time towards reading and writing, and sleeping, is alright so long as it doesn’t then become a source of resentment. To make people happy by appeasing their sense of what is right while still appeasing your own sense of what you need; right or wrong. The way artists follow artistic trends while exploring their own capacities as artists; right or wrong. You can’t paint exactly what the people want; then there’s no artistry involved. But you can’t drip paint in the 17th century and call it art as it is not only inconceivable but also incomprehensible. Art it did not go from David to Duchamp from one day to the next. It’s been a continuous process of give and take; as long as there is both give and take and not wholly giving or taking, there is progress. There is art. There is a well-lived life.