the unnecessary

One of my favorite Shakespeare plays, and the only one that's brought me close to tears while only reading and not watching it, is King Lear. After reading it for class I thought about that line "O reason not the need!" for a long time and it comes back like all the touching ones do. King Lear was asking his daughters for more knights and they keep telling him he doesn't need these things, and he's half-crazy at this point and he begins rambling about need and beggars and so on. Professor Parker talked about the distinction between humans and animals being that humans enjoy, cultivate and "need" things that they don't really need for their basic survival. How the things that are really important to us are things that are "superfluous." Life is one thing, and human life is another.

The buzz topic of the recent past is happiness. When were we happy and unhappy, and why. For my birthday last year Henry gave me a book on happiness (which I haven't read yet, I'm sorry to say, Henry!). I think he was trying to tell me something. He probably thought I was unhappy. Which sometimes I was, but following that period was the best time in my life thus far. Best time being the most intensely happy, though there were other periods of being steadily happy which can be just as good. I remember Yonina telling us once about the best year of her life, when she was working in New York, and I can't remember her explanation for why. I got so caught up in the feeling of it, the steady contentment. I find it difficult to read about happiness in a book, though obviously I find it in writings; I guess it's the idea of speaking about it directly, because it's such a textured thing and doesn't seem to stand alone but is instead buried deep in other things.

The passage from King Lear arose in my mind again after a surge of chats about happiness, and also paying attention to why I've been really happy to be back in California after my trip in January, much differently than when I came home post-Cambridge. If I had to choose a thread, it would be the unnecessary. In college my happiness was different than now and I was somewhat minimalist. When it came time for senior sales I realized I had nothing to sell, because I had nothing in my room beyond our Harvard-issued furniture and all of my things fit into six storage boxes and a suitcase. It's not that now material things are more significant in their own right; I'm still as materialistic as your average person. Only that the unnecessary carries certain feelings, like a sense of permanence in temporary places, growth, being young and inexperienced and idealistic, faith that things will work out and you can take them slowly, a lot that I can't articulate.

I like having and doing things that I don't need to have and do. I like making side dishes and having vegetables with dinner even though my brothers only care about the primary meaty food. I'm relishing making new recipes because the joy of eating good food is the pleasure of making a fundamental need more than fundamental. It makes me happy to have fruits on our table in the wooden bowl I got for Christmas that I would never buy for myself, and to have snacks in our cabinets. I appreciate decorations and photo frames and candles and vases, and moving books from my room at home to my apartment even though I've already read them. I love having time for movies, and stories in them that aren't mine but become mine. I'm especially happy for the luxury of music, which has become more clearly the substitute for and substance of much in my life. It's there when I'm driving, cooking, doing nothing.

It's not a new thought to think about bare survival versus a full life, but I suppose what I mean is aside from the big things that provide personal fulfillment beyond what you literally need, like your job and friends and family, all these other things are purely for you. People need that.