Part One
Chapter 6: Joy Itself Can Bring Sorrow

THE DEATH OF A BELOVED WIFE

The joy shared by two people who fulfill one another's deepest needs is incomparable, a far remove from mere physical attraction or pleasure of the moment. Some of the greatest love songs of our day express this state so well that they are performed over and over by various artists.

Timeless love songs express the crux of longing and love so sweetly and succinctly that are embraced by generations of listernes.

Yet, as we all know, it often happens that intense rapture ends badly.
Romeo and Juliet contains these cautionary words:

These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume.

In the wedding ceremony, lovers pledge unswerving devotion “till death do us part.” Whether death comes early or late, for any who love the one who departs, it is always too soon.

In 1999, Japanese intellectual Jun Eto took his own life, at the age of sixty-six. In a memoir called My Wife and I, written three months after losing his beloved wife to illness, he recounts her death in searing words of longing and despair. The book is in fact his own last testament. During his wife's illness, supporting her to the end without leaving her side became his all-consuming goal and the focus of his existence. After her death, he was bereft of any reason for living, left to face a meaningless expanse of time in which to wait for his own death.

The couple had been so close that they were sometimes likened to identical twins. The death of his wife spelled the end of everything. In the book he portrays an almost unbearable longing.

She murmured to no one in particular, “My life is over now. It's all finished.”

There was an echo of such profound desolation in her voice that I could make no reply. It came home to me then that everything was finished for me, too, and that there was nothing I could do about it ... Perhaps the medicine had brought her some relief, for she smiled peacefully, looked at me, and said, “We visited a lot of places together, didn't we?” ... “We certainly did,” I said. “And each one was special in its own way.” I could not bring myself to say the words, “We'll go again.” Instead, tears running down my cheeks, I retreated into the kitchenette ...

As long as my wife's life was not yet exhausted, down to the very last moment I had the clear goal of staying with her, and never leaving her alone; now that she is gone, I have no such goal. I am only obsessed body and soul with the coming hour of my own solitary death, propelled second by second towards a meaningless death.

Why is parting inevitable? Why are we doomed to vanish in the end? Swiss philosopher Karl Hilty (1833–1909) warned that love is “happiness that penetrates the depths of the heart, but it can also become an all-destroying unhappiness ... The deeper and purer the emotion of one given over completely to the happiness of love, the more certain that person is to become completely miserable, unless he can escape such a bitter experience through death.”

Bliss and suffering, it seems, always go hand in hand. He who seeks joy that mounts to the skies must be prepared to face sorrow unto death.

THE UNDERPINNINGS OF HAPPINESS

In The Sorrows of Young Werther, Goethe laments, “Must it ever be thus,—that the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our misery?”

The very things that contribute most to human happiness—love, health, possessions, fame—are also the cause of unhappiness and tears. That is because the moment these underpinnings are taken away, our happiness crumbles and we cannot help sinking into sorrow.

The great Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) suffered in his declining years from crippling arthritis. Even so, he continued doggedly to paint by holding the brush in his twisted fingers and wrapping it in place with a long bandage. In a letter to a friend dated 1919, he expressed the frustration of not being able to use his talent: “Now that I can no longer count on my arms and legs, I would like to paint large canvases. I dream only of Veronese, of his Marriage at Cana. What misery!”

He who gasps for breath in the struggle against illness has lost the prop of health, and he who weeps for a lost love has experienced betrayal. Those who grieve for a dead spouse or child have lost the light of life and are plunged into a vale of tears. From the moment we lay claim to happiness, the hand of misery draws close. Happiness of any kind for sakes us in the end.

Is there no end to this wretchedness but the grave?

THE STING OF MEMORY

“When it's over, it's over. At least I'll have my memories.” Some people comfort themselves with this thought. Truthfully, there is no use in mourning lost happiness. The desire to escape present pain by losing oneself in happy memories is universal—but does it actually work? After one has fallen ill, for example, do memories of yesterday's glowing health bring cheer, or simply remind one of what has been lost?

No matter how lovely the past may have been, it will never return, and the present is not what we wish it to be. Memories can be sweet, but they do not have power to change our current circumstances.

Not only that, the experience of once-in-a-lifetime happiness can cast a pall over the remainder of one's days. Imagine the feelings of someone suddenly separated forever from a soulmate. This person would likely feel keen regret: “What I believed was my greatest happiness was really my greatest misfortune: Had I never known that happiness, I would be better off today.” A taste of grand, radiant happiness makes it hard to settle later for ordinary scraps. Encountering the perfect mate cannot be termed unqualified good fortune.

“There is no greater sorrow than to recall, in wretchedness, the happy time.” Thesewords are from Dante's Inferno. A too-happy past can serve only to increase the hellish torments of the present.

THE SEARCH FOR A LASTING HAPPINESS

A boy shattered by the death of his beloved dog took to carrying around a stuffed toy squirrel. He explained it this way: “Stuffed animals are better than pets. They're nice, and they don't betray you ... Dying is a kind of betrayal.”

After the last child marries and moves away, many parents—particularly women, who are often primary caregivers—succumb to a depression that has been named “empty nest syndrome.” The reason for this widespread phenomenon is doubtless that to a mother, her children are her very life. Yet the newspapers are full of incidents of children shooting, stabbing, or bludgeoning their parents, often for the most trivial of reasons. It is hard to even imagine the feelings of betrayal and anguish that a parent attacked this way by a child must feel.

In the words of Shakespeare, “How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is / To have a thankless child.”

Is there anything that we can devote our whole lives to without regret, besides a lasting happiness with no shadow of betrayal? In this world where everything perishes, imperishable happiness is above all else our common desire, and its attainment is our life's true purpose.