Can we talk?
I believe it was the very funny Joan Rivers who made that line her opening remark, but I’m asking you to delve into a discussion with me about something I do find interesting.
The subject would be “happiness”.
I’ve always been fascinated by the concept that we do one thing in the here, and now, but we do not necessarily realize that it is relation to all the other things we could be doing, but aren’t pursuing.
This encompasses where we live, the career we choose, the partner we select, it actually defines how our life evolves. Supposedly the decisions we make are in the pursuit of this elusive “happiness” that we seem to achieve fleetingly.
I am of the strong belief that many of us are taking steps in a direction, thinking we are moving toward a better life, greater comfort, and increased affluence that allows for more “happiness”, but there are circumstances that arise where we find that somewhere down the path we have veered ourselves into a very unhappy place.
I do think JD Vance is onto something with his “Cat Lady” comment. I think JD Vance’s comment is worthy of a fuller exploration.
At the core of their intent Mitt Romney was absolutely correct when he said that forty-seven percent of Americans do not pay Federal Income Tax, and therefore have no skin in the game as it were, are not financially invested in our mutual governmental effort at the national level. They do not “participate” in funding our Republic. We really aren’t “all in this together”, some are taking a free ride.
And Satan’s Spawn, known as Hillary, was indeed correct when she cited that half the country are deplorables, where she went wrong is in suggesting that this had something to do with income and lifestyle. I would postulate that there are well educated urban dwellers who earn a high income, are living the new age lifestyle they’ve been sold by “Cosmopolitan” magazine and some vision from Hollywood in the guise of “Girls” from Lena Dunham, who find themselves completely unhappy living a vacuous hedonistic lifestyle that makes them every bit as “deplorable” as the “Wal Mart” hillbilly that Hillary intended to skewer.
Happiness.
I do wonder, as you should as well, we have clearly produced an entire generation of single women in their thirties who spend a great deal of time online who have achieved some degree of affluence, and education, yet appear to be the most unhappy people we live amongst. Why?
They have no life partner which makes them feel less than fulfilled. They would not qualify as “deplorables” under the Hillary Clinton definition, in fact, these are her biggest fans, her constituency. These are the people that champion Hillary. They champion abortion on demand, they champion the alphabet mafia, they champion big government, they demand open borders, they embrace DEI, and they worship at the altar of “equity” and “Woke”.
Yet I ask the simple question, are they “happy”?
Could there be a young married woman living lakeside in rural America, far away from the urban center, earning far, far less than their urban counterpart, who doesn’t have quick and easy access to Indian food, Thai food, Pilates, and all night clubs, who would indeed qualify as one of Satan’s Spawn Hillary’s “deplorables”, and yet who lives a life in complete contentment, and would define themselves as “happy” with their lifestyle, “happy” with the choices they’ve made in life, “happy” in their situation?
Somewhere during my own lifetime of well over sixty years we moved away from the spiritual and toward the material. The easy phrase to describe this that is always seen in the mainstream media is that we are living a more secular lifestyle.
But I question whether or not that urban dwelling “single cat lady” that JD Vance disparaged, is as happy as she wants to be given the lifestyle she pursued at the expense of all other opportunities. And I also ask, was she sold a bad bill of goods?
Did these women en masse buy into a vision sold by Hollywood, sold by academia, and are they really living their best lives?
There are times that family is the biggest influence on where we choose to live. I’ve long wondered why I hear people who have just returned from Hawaii claiming it is the “best place they’ve ever been to on earth”, yet they don’t pack up and move there. They continue to live in a complete “shit hole” called Baltimore. But they cannot just simply pick up and move, they have “roots” deep into the community. An aging mom to care for, a slew of brothers, sisters, and cousins to whom they feel some obligation.
So in effect they’ve sacrificed their highest location desire for family. They’ve made one choice at the expense of all other places where they might find added personal “happiness”. Why would anyone commit years and years of a life, when time is our most precious commodity, living in a place that does not make them ultimately “happy”?
I always tell friends, “there are no do-overs”. I often hear friends say they cannot commit to an event, or excursion because their work takes priority. I am known to reply to this response that, “no one ever lays there at the end and says I should have hit that fourth quarter quota”. Meaning that if taking a day off to go offshore fishing with the boys is going to produce an extreme level of “personal happiness”, that maybe they should give up a day of work to gain a lifetime memory.
Maybe “It’s a Wonderful Life” did a better job than I am describing this same phenomenon.
But in light of JD Vance’s comment I think it is a topic worthy of discussion.
Why do you live where you live? Why do you go out the door to that particular job every day? How do you choose to spend your disposable funds? What percent of time in a week is spent in the actual and very real pursuit of “happiness”?
I think in view of the times in which we find ourselves living, the speed of which seems to instill us all with fear and trepidation, it is an important discussion to focus on the subject of “happiness”.
Because I find in reviewing so many of the lives of people I know, it appears from this perch that they put one foot in a direction, another foot in that same direction, and unforeseen circumstances from the choice of that direction forced them down a path they didn’t want to tread. For whatever reason they found themselves soon running in a direction they never intended to go. And they woke up years later in circumstances and situations they never expected, didn’t want to experience, and find themselves “trapped” in a lifestyle that doesn’t provide any level of “happiness”.
One can wake up one day, and very soon, to find that the monthly expense “nut” is the task master and they the slave to its demands. Get up, go out the door, work a job you hate, because absent that effort they are going to tow something away. And when offspring are involved, and you have obligations, and mouths to feed, well, one can wake up to find their life is no longer their own. Through a series of choices they find themselves involved in living a life that dictates and demands. Where they’ve lost all control over their own life. Does that sound “happy” to you?
Circumstances are dictating their lifestyle.
I just had this conversation with one of my children, where I pointed out that some denizens of the small community where we are vacationing may not make the big city salary, they may not have all the shopping options, food options, theater, sporting events, available to those choosing to live in the big city.
But does that mean they are living a life of “less”? Does it mean their life has a lesser lifestyle value than what the big city resident is experiencing in New York, or San Francisco?
Because the vision sold to us all by Hollywood, Academia, the mainstream media, and Satan’s Spawn Hillary is that the big city dweller is somehow “superior”, while the small town boy or girl is a “deplorable” for making the choice to pursue a life less loud, a life less complicated, a life less stressful.
Somehow being able to shop at Gucci down the street from your rental in New York City makes you a superior being to the woman stretching the food dollar at Dollar General in that small rural town.
But what if the New Yorker is stressed out, taking mood medications for depression, and can’t get through a Tuesday night absent draining an entire bottle of wine? While petting her cat and complaining online with hundreds, even thousands just like her online?
While the rural housewife who married her high school sweetheart, and avoided college for employment, is just as happy as can be driving the rural Roads in that cliched pick-up truck and listening to Taylor Swift?
Who has a more fulfilling existence, the stay-at-home rural mom who has little in the way of material objects, or the single cat lady with the big job title in NYC but no one to hug at night?
Which one is truly “deplorable”?
Which one is achieving what our forefathers understood as our highest and best calling, the pursuit of happiness?
Maybe it's not the life circumstances -- single vs married; childless vs with children -- that produce the unhappiness. It could be that the quest to feel superior to your peers is hollow. The people who are content to be themselves and to mind their own business are more at peace.
In the universe of insults to political opponents, "cat ladies" is pretty mild. So why is the media so outraged by it?