Monday 24 October 2005

Pic of the day: "I don't need anything." But you don't look happy.

I am not quite happy

For several years, I used to be more happy than I am now. What I am now is more like "content". Contentedness is passive, isolated, self absorbed. Happiness is alive, radiant, actively engaging the world in some aspect. This is how I see it.

It is not that I am unhappy. An unhappy person wishes for something, but cannot attain it. I am simply passive. My state of mind is probably more of a loss for others than it is for myself. I am fading from the world while still alive, because the world interests me less, at least on a personal level. I am still keenly interested in politics, economy and technology. And I still enjoy being alive and in the world. But the world has become an impersonal background, a nonplayer character in my life. There is no longer a personal connection to the world, as an equal, face to face.

I believe this is because my connection to the world was a person, my best friend. Now that I no longer have a best friend, the world has faded to a background, a nourishing substrate where my body lives. It no longer affects me personally in the same way. I don't think this is unique, especially among men. We are born to be more remote from the world than women are, because we are more replaceable. As individuals we are less essential to the continuation of our species in the world. Women are more essential and therefore by default more integrated in the world, whereas some of us mainly connect to the world through a woman (or our children, if any).

I know I used to say that there was no one I would rather be than myself. But now there is: Myself 10 years ago. I was more conflicted, less wise, and fatter. But I had friends, and I could still occasionally laugh together with a girl I liked. Today there is between me and the world this vast, empty silence. And I don't think I could cross it ever again, even if I wanted to.

***

I have written in these pages years ago about a discovery in psychology: That men were not so much less prone to depression, they just experienced it different from women. While depressed women wept and were sad, men felt disconnected. This was what I read, and I believed it. But I don't believe it anymore. Now I am familiar with the disconnectedness, and it is not depression, it is something different. This should not really surprise us: Recent advances in scanning the living brain has shown us that the differences between men and women's brains are much larger than we believed until a few years ago. So it is no wonder that women are more prone to depression. They are essential in the continuation of the species. Their tears create sympathy, their weakness attracts help. But the disconnected man is not essential. His disconnection causes further disconnection, until he becomes unfit for human reproduction and takes on a more peripheral role, observing the world from a distance.

There is one shared risk, though: Just like the depressed person may crumble and give up under the weight of her sadness and fear, the disconnected may decide to leave this newly unfamiliar world entirely. But this is not a risk with me. I may want to move to a less complicated galaxy, but only with my mind. Humans interest me, and I hope to spend the next month creating some more of them. Not from the fire in my loins but from the fire in my mind. In a few days it is NaNoWriMo again. And then I will once again happily engage with a world of my own creation, God willing.