Treatise on Emotional Economy
Happiness is notoriously subjective, impossible to consider quantitatively or qualitatively. But if we ignore its nature, we can treat it holistically as follows:
1) Happiness is finite. A commodity that depends on so many factors, even if they are unknown and varying, cannot exist in unlimited amounts because resources are scarce; there has to be a tradeoff involved.
2) The "world" we live in is inanimate and neutral. Outside the poetic realm, the world cannot experience emotion, and is thus devoid of any net happiness (or unhappiness).
This leads me to conclude that happiness and unhappiness exist in a zero-sum relationship: a gain for one side entails a corresponding loss for the other side. The innate mindset is, "If you are happy, there is one more happy person who is not me."
Curiouser and curiouser. Why, then, am I so rarely happy? Surely, you think, the thought that my bliss is indirectly resulting in another's misery is incentive enough! And indeed it would be, were it not for an even more malevolent alternative! There’s a loophole in the law, you'll find...
"Revati Nafday, you made sure there was a loophole when you wrote that law!" you shout (or at least, you do if you know your Harry Potter). Anyway.
Suppose that you and I are friends, and we are having separate but wonderful Wednesdays. You squeal and giggle and go on about yours; I gesticulate emphatically and laugh and fill you in about mine. We are each of us so immersed in our own respective raptures that we quite ignore one another, but that ignorance has no detrimental effect on our relationship because you and I, my friend, understand that the bliss-ignorance equation works both ways.
So we are still friends when we both have terrible, horrible, very bad Thursdays. You sob and sniffle and moan over yours; I rant and bitch and whine about mine. Again, we pay little or no attention to each other's problems, secure in the knowledge that nothing fortifies a friendship like reciprocated wretchedness.
Then comes Friday, the day that we've been looking forward to since Monday morning, and it surpasses your wildest expectations. I, on the other hand, am lying facedown in a ditch of disillusionment, contemplating what was essentially a week of foreplay that never delivered.
It falls to me, then. Do I force you to contain your delight and listen instead to my complaints (knowing full well that a part of you will resent me for it)? Or do I suck it up and rejoice for you with the selfless portion of my being (while the other 90 percent simmers in venom)?
And that brings us to the beautiful paradox: A happy person can make one person unhappy (the tradeoff), but no more people can be made happy; on the other hand, an unhappy person can bring down MANY OTHERS! Moreover, while other people's plights may well be a diversion and amusement, they do not negate one's own misery at the end of the day - thus, unhappiness is irreversible.
This contagiousness of unhappiness appears to compromise the neutrality assumed in (2) above. The solution to the paradox is...babies. Until the terrible twos and threes, babies are overwhelmingly, blindly happy. Sure, they cry, but the unconditional love, trust, and joy that they radiate quite equilibrate the hate, suspicion, and despair of adults. For more on the inexplicable behavior and powers of babies, I refer you to my brother's interesting article on how they are all "whack." As long as their presence allows me to bask in my own melancholy and bring you all down with me, I think they're cute. After all, misery loves company.