If You’re Happy and You Know It
by
Suzanne Berndt Williams
I recently heard a joke about a good soul who meets the Virgin Mary in heaven. During the ensuing conversation, a question arises as to why, for all her blessings, Mary is always portrayed in art as a bit sad or melancholy.
“Is everything okay?” The good soul asks.
Mary responds reassuringly, “Oh, everything is great. Fine. It’s just . . . it’s just that we always wanted to have a daughter.”
Upon further inspection of other women in works of art, I see that same visage; slightly wistful, perhaps.
DaVinci’s Mona Lisa looks like she’s saying, “Well, this is all fine and good, Leo, but I really need to get home and feed my cat.”
Vermeer’s Girl with Pearl Earring has a look that screams, “Bite me.”
Botticelli’s Birth of Venus shows the goddess not reveling in her emergence from the sea as a full grown woman, but focused more on her unruly hair and her heavily rendered hips.
Maybe the artists knew something their less soulful and contemplative contemporaries did not. Happiness is elusive–even for the Mother of God–and difficult to capture on canvas much less hold on to in real life. They knew then what women today are only beginning to discover which is that women do not have to appear nice or happy or cheerful in order to be beautiful, effective and relevant.
\Happiness is tough. Achievement of happiness has been thrust upon us by our parents, our peers and our very own Declaration of Independence. Women especially fall prey to the idea of acting happy even if they are not in order to buoy those around them.
From an early age, I was prompted to be happy, know it and then of all things – clap my hands. At five it was evident, that even if I wasn’t particularly happy, I better clap my hands or the other children might peg me for an unappreciative outlier on the happiness bell curve .
I was called out on my happiness quotient or lack thereof at an age when I was focused more on my career and less on exuding warm fuzzies to those around me. After finishing a residency program and receiving a master’s degree, the sixty five year old male CEO of the hospital, who was also my supervisor, presented me with my employee review. I scored all tens on a scale of one to ten in competency, depth of knowledge, interpersonal skills and team building. His only suggestion was that I needed to smile more and lighten up a bit. This from a man who professed to like his coffee black, like his women. He was also the chivalrous guy who invited the Vice President of Nursing to hop on his desk and “see if all the equipment still worked” after she returned from a particularly harrowing hysterectomy. A woman smiling around this guy was his idea of getting permission. I was not happy, I knew it and the closest I came to clapping my hands was my secret desire to box his ears. After consulting with Human Resources about these observations, I was assured he was only joking and I should be happy with my review. Smile!
Ironically, unlike other women my age, I was not raised with the happiness hoodie secured tightly under my chin. In fact, happy was not a default emotion that I could easily retreat to in my youth. I was raised by a first generation German American, World War II vet whose parting words to me were often, “Keep a low profile and don’t draw attention to yourself.” I was never sure if this was a result of his stoic German upbringing or some kind of post traumatic stress disorder. Besides developing a self-imposed dowager’s hump, his words taught me not to emote. I was quieted for giggling or crying. We weren’t necessarily happy but we weren’t sad either because, should we show either emotion, what would people think? Perhaps this is why, after only forty years and some intensive therapy, I can now guffaw and weep with the best of them.
Still, I prefer well-being to happiness; peace of mind to bliss. There is less pressure, less expectation and less chance that it will lead to an outcome requiring me to dress up or shave my legs. As for mother Mary and her desire for a daughter, it is just as well that she had a son. It was tough enough for Christ to be responsible for the sins of all mankind and suffer for it, but Christina would have had to do the same, with a smile on her face.
Suzanne Berndt Williams is a recovering hospital administrator with an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and a graduate degree from Arizona State University. She has completed marathons with her husband in Los Angeles and Dublin, Ireland and decided not to follow through on her thoughts of divorce at mile eighteen and mile twenty-two, respectively. When not herding teenagers, she can be found spinning-on a bike and sometimes in her head. Contact Suzanne.
