... as happiness does. Or, as author Steve Salerno put it in a Thursday Wall Street Journal op-ed, peace of mind and "doing what needs doing" should be the goal, and not the eternal stochastic pursuit of ecstasy.
One morning when I was 13, I elbowed my father as he got ready for
work. "Dad," I said, "are you happy?" For a long moment he stared at
me. Then he replied, "Son, a man doesn't have time to think about that.
A man just does what needs doing." He gave me one of his
you'll-understand-someday smiles, and left.
[...]
If the quest for joy doesn't take center stage at
Christmas, it will surely pop up the following week. Typically, New
Year's resolutions that don't involve weight loss have something to do
with embracing change, choosing happiness, following your dreams, etc.
We are consumed by the pursuit of happiness.
That's too bad. Because it's that very pursuit -- as
currently framed -- that may prevent you from finding happiness, or at
least a passable facsimile.
Now, I'm not contending that Dad's stoic machismo is
what life ought to be about -- for either gender. But a lot of us
seemed a lot happier, or at least less restless, before the Happiness
Movement began bullying us.
Happiness is not a warm puppy. A lot of us in medicine learned something that others in all walks of life would do well to learn, a lesson learned through long hours and inconvenient emergencies. What matters at the end of the day, when you're reporting on your attending's patients to him, or signing out to your fellow residents, is that you did what needed to be done. You responded to the ER call at two AM on the patient with the open fracture. You checked the hematocrit at two AM on the trauma patient with the ipsilateral femur and tibia fractures, who lost a ton of blood even before getting to the hospital. You checked the wound on the hip replacement patient before discharging her, because you're attending asked you to.
Mr. Salerno sums it up.
Here's something else Dad told me: "Life isn't built around 'fun.' It's built around peace of mind."
The patients, the doctors, the residents all have peace of mind when the i's have been dotted and the t's crossed, and what needs to be done has been done. Family is important for a similar reason. Having dependents means they depend on you to "do what needs to be done," whether it's getting up 90 minutes early to clear a snowed-in driveway or running to the market when you're exhausted to restock supplies for the next few days meals. That, in itself, is it's own reward, knowing inside that those dependents can depend on you. Being someone whom your family can depend on should make you happy.
Mr. Salerno also makes a point about lofty goals and loftier expectations.
Contrary to what you hear from Oprah, not "everything you want in life"
is attainable (unless, maybe, you are Oprah). Consider the staple line
from school administrators during self-esteem-boosting
student-assemblies: "In this great country, you can even be president,
if you want!" While technically it's true that anybody can be
president, it is not true that everybody can be president.
Or should be. We demand our presidents be prepared to handle every situation, to be someone you can depend upon in a crisis. Current public opinion aside, President Bush showed himself to be one of those people on September 11th and thereafter, not losing sight of the goal of keeping America safe from people trying to destroy us. Even if it meant going after someone who had, as everyone believed at the time, the potential to do us great harm.
Looking at the current crop of nominees, both Democrat and Republican, leaves us with only Republican candidates showing a similar stalwart commitment to continuing the effort. And it shows us only Republican candidates with experience and a track record that could lead you to believe that they will "do what needs to be done." The leading Democrats have all either never had such conviction and experience (Obama) or, lacking a track record, repudiated that initial impulse when it became inconvenient (Edwards, Clinton).
Of the the other Democrats only Senators Dodd and Biden have enough of a track record for you to know of them what to expect. But neither of them has shown the conviction and determination to demonstrate that they will consistently "do what needs to be done." Mr. Richardson has already told us that he won't. Of the Republicans Mr. McCain and Mr. Giuliani have been in positions to show that they "do what needs to be done," and would quite obviously do so again. Mr. Thompson's years in the Senate, similar to Senators Dodd and Biden, have established his track record enough to know that he would "do what needs to be done," and to a lesser extent Mr. Romney's years in Massachusetts in dealing with a very lopsidedly Democratic legislature have also (though admittedly his positions have shifted noticeably, and uncomfortably). Mr. Huckabee is not someone I can count on. Ron Paul? No way.
Having lost a brother to terrorist actions I'm not willing to consider anyone who cannot be counted upon to "do what needs to be done" by the dependents, the American people, in terms of security. And neither should you. It will keep all of us happy in the sense that Mr. Salerno means.
I'll be picking up his book, SHAM: How The Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless.
