True serenity cannot be based on the suppression of opposite feelings.
We wish ourselves and others as much happiness as possible but what if the highest feeling of happiness, if true serenity presupposed a human being who must also have suffered the deepest pain?
Is happiness only possible in a heart that has matured through pleasure and displeasure?
True joy is a serious matter.
Seneca
No, this is not an apologyfor cheerfulness in catastrophic times. Reasons for not being cheerful can be abundantly found in every daily newspaper, in talk shows, in posts on the internet – and in our daily lives.
Let’s take the test. On any random day, not necessarily the first sunny, summerish day after a long series of cold, gray, overcast days, let’s walk along the city streets. Go past slumped shoulders, hoods pulled down low, past faces that express a dull emptiness or mute despair. …
Have many people lost their smiles? Is it unworldly, even provocative, to dare to smile?
In his highly acclaimed book Über die Heiterkeit in schwierigen Zeiten (On Serenity in Difficult Times), Axel Hacke writes:
Smiling has an inward and an outward effect. It cheers up the smiling person and the person being smiled at. Smiling can set off a chain reaction. You smile at someone, they smile back, so a smile enters the world and travels further. You just have to start.
When clearing out our attic, an activity, that has an immediate noticeable effect of cheerfulness and lightness , I recently found an article from 2015;). After pointing out the current crises of at some length, the author sums up as follows:
It is difficult to say whether the negative and threatening, whether pessimism and misanthropy have already gained the upper hand. One thing seems certain, however: The dark has already advanced so far that it has itself become a dominant force against which the subversive power of confidence must be directed. It is also certain that people will blame others if they do not discover the power within themselves. (DIE ZEIT, 27.8.2015)
The question is: Where do we derive this confidence, this inner strength from?
I have always deeply admired people who, amid the greatest internal and external challenges, have not only retained their inner freedom and human dignity but have also marvelously risen above themselves. Such is the concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl., to name just one example.
It seems almost unbelievable that people in unimaginably frightening life situations can still show humour. Years ago, I read a newspaper article that has remained unforgettable to me, about British prisoners in a Nazi POW camp. Through all kinds of clever ideas, they expressed a subtle mockery of their conditions, which made their captivity more or less bearable.
The ability to use humour can serve as a weapon against the inevitable afflictions of our existence. It testifies, as Friedrich Schiller says in his essay on The Sublime, to the fact that man bears internal freedom that lifts him above all suffering.
Serenity in unfortunate circumstances requires distancing oneself from one’s expectations, i.e; .an attitude of serenity towards any possible outcome.
Serenity has to do with letting go. It is similar to forgiveness – not bearing any grudges. Feeling light-hearted has nothing to do with accepting an injustice or with denial of pain. Serenity is an attitude of grace that goes hand- in- hand with kindness and wisdom.
Should one always float through everyday life smiling serenely and gratifying our fellow human beings with radiant presence and always be “in a good mood”? Aren’t we already living within “society in a constant state of intoxication”, as the philosopher Wilhelm Schmid regretfully states in his book on Happiness?
A society characterised by “happiness addiction”, incapable of mourning and instead trying to make life more or less bearable with the help of alcohol, drugs and psychotropic medication or by binge-watching Netflix series?
True serenity cannot be based on the suppression of opposite feelings. The German poet Christian Morgenstern writes:
As much happiness as possible, they say. But what if the highest feeling of happiness presupposed a human being who must also have suffered the deepest pain? If happiness were only possible at all in a heart that has matured through pleasure and displeasure? Whoever demands as many opportunities for happiness as possible must also demand as much unhappiness as possible, or he negates its basic conditions.
And he continues:
Should the possibility of ever greater happiness not lie in ever greater knowledge and love (in ever higher forms)?
Are we capable of that – of cheerful serenity by our own decision and by our strength?
The gift of painful experiences could be that we pause on our chosen path and begin to reflect on ourselves and life in general. We probably need to have suffered to release compassion, wisdom and serenity from their imprisonment within us.
Not everyone needs to experience hard blows of fate for this. However there is a profound truth in the words of the medieval mystic Meister Eckehart:
Suffering is the fastest horse to perfection.
How can we achieve the equanimity that enables us to be cheerful, regardless of whether we are at the top or the bottom of the Wheel of Fortune? Here, a door opens and reveals a new level. New? Well, really? The ancient Greeks already knew that a truly harmonious life, eudaimonía, can only be achieved in harmony with a divine world order, when we experience ourselves as part of the abundance of the infinite.
What constitutes a serious problem for many contemporaries, besides the myriad of fears, complaints and discomforts that existence brings on Earth, is that no sense can be made of what is happening. It is hard to recognise – to quote Goethe’s Faust –
what holds the world together at its core. “.
Of course, I can shout out my contempt for death with wit and humour into a seemingly indifferent universe. However, that does not free me from the inescapable knowledge of my mortality, of the transience of everything, and of all those I have loved. In retrospect, not just at the hour of death, many things I once considered worthwhile, all the dramas that kept the wheel of my life turning, lose their importance.
That could make me deeply depressed. Or is THAT supposed to make me cheerful?
I might also feel the impulse to have an incredibly healing, liberating laughter, that echoes in the harmony of a benevolent universe which answers in return.
Wilhelm Schmid speaks of the “happiness of coherence”, of an “abundance of experiences of transcendence in the metaphysical”: It is very easy to imagine that this is the essential contribution to realising a fulfilled life: To open life to a dimension of transcendence that goes beyond the limits of finite life …
Such insights can be a profound help but it’s important not to merely acknowledge them mentally. We can often observe with astonishment that people continue to suffer rather than say goodbye to their habitual patterns of thought and feelings. Modern research attributes this to neuronal pathways in the brain, which turn into deeply engraved ruts by our constantly repeated input. addicting us to our usual toxic dose of negativity. It seems to really feel good. In any case, the media thrives and lives on the general desire for doom and gloom.
The good news is that we can create new neuronal pathways in the brain. Our heart is the key when it finally opens up and lovingly, joyfully plays its part in the renewal processes. .
When we are willing to leave the familiar level of reality, things finally dissolve into serenity. If we are “serious” about undergoing a mental and spiritual transformation process, suffering turns into joy. We discover, or rather un-cover, joy as our birthright. It is already inherent in our being.
“Heiterkeit“, the German word for cheerfulness and serenity, was originally a meteorological term that described the light of the sky. The deep, causeless joy that is independent of external circumstances. Light, colour, sound, are manifestations of our heavenly being.
On the gentle wings of this celestial vibration, we can rise into the air and take a bird’s eye view of our lives and of human activity. With all compassion – this is very funny, tragic-comic, and enormously liberating!
It is then no longer so much about coping with the gravity of life, but about transforming it together with others who are also learning to “fly”.
Cheerful serenity is not spiritual bypassing. It illuminates the darkness and shows the way out. It leads from the pain and sadness of separation to the joy of being connected to the healing, sacred source of all beings.
