We live in a world which seems to take little interest in joy. Indeed it often seems we are expected to distrust joy. But it cannot be that individually we fear and distrust joy. So what is it? Simply put, joy is not newsworthy and therefore reports of what is happening in the world, including our own neighbourhood, reflect a universal media distrust of joy.
It serves the media’s purpose as a general rule to show a world convulsed by anger, endemic recriminations and bitter rivalries and to depict institutions – governments (and oppositions), the law, universities and schools, the arts, business, unions, churches, marriage and family life, sports associations, and indeed, any constituted authority you can think of – as corrupt, inclined to mischief, misguided and untruthful and oppressive with people as a result mistreated, doleful, fearful and resentful and not possessed of one single iota of joie de vivre or sense of humour. In the media every day a “dismal day doth dawn.”
This is not at all surprising. It is part of the well-known media syndrome which welcomes disaster and the worse the better. Newspapers and television programmes which kept on daily observing in dominant headlines that 99.99% of the population happily escaped death by bloody murder, tragic drowning or horrific accident would soon go out of business unless seriously subsidized. Nevertheless such reporting would reflect a truth about the world. Not only that. The facts about disasters and bad news themselves reflect another truth, which is that most people are happy most of the time. And this just as much applies to people whose nations are sorely tried by fate and circumstances and man’s infinite capacity to muck things up. A recent survey indicates that people in much-afflicted South American countries are among the happiest in the world. Every country, certainly including ours, is populated by thousands upon thousands of people in every walk of life who are not only happy but are admirable, brave, honest, loyal, intelligent, hard-working, hopeful and inspiring. It is not the business of the media to say so.
This media bias to single out and highlight what is wrong and dreadful in society does serve the splendid purpose of forcing out into the open grievous ills which can then be publicly addressed and removed. And also, of course, unrelentingly negative reporting and commentary does satisfy that reprehensible inclination in all of us to take delight in the misfortune of others described in the German by a single, powerful word schadenfreude. “There but for the grace of God…” is a very human reaction to bad news. So the media is on to something there also.
But how pleasant to think that individual lives must so often be filled with joy! Speaking for myself alone – nobody can do anything else – my own life is daily filled with joys and satisfactions and I have every reason to think that most people have the same experience.
The list is long. The beauty of the garden I look out on as I write this. The book I am reading now, a Christmas gift, A River Runs Through It, packed with the insights and marvellous turns of phrase of a great writer – and all the other books I have lined up to read. Two poems I am writing and I may almost be getting them right. The sun shining on water after rain and a lovely wind blowing. My wife companionably bringing an ice-cold drink of spiced sorrel and a good conversation with her. The delicious meal I know she is preparing because the fragrance drifts in the air. Cricket to watch – India v Pakistan in an enthralling encounter – and football across the world and all the other sports I am addicted to watching. Our young son on holiday and having the time of his life in festive Guyana and our older son and his wife and our grandson visiting our home, the little boy at an age when awareness of life’s wonders is blossoming in a way that never ceases to astonish and delight. Laughter abounding in the house as the young people and their friends come and go. A concert just attended at the Canadians featuring exceptional Guyanese talent, the memory of which makes the heart sing.
If I spent time enough and thought, the list of daily joys would easily grow to fill a sheaf of chapters in a book. Small joys soon add up to a great contentment. But readers of this column, if they have got this far, will be itching to get on to the pages with grimmer news and the world out there replete with more exciting woes and desperate tribulations.
I will end, however, with one over-arching life-joy which all of us take too much for granted. It is the life-long love of friends. To have had steadfast friends throughout one’s life is surely among the greatest blessings. To have had friends “whom,” as George Bernard Shaw said of his friend William Archer, “I was never sorry to see or unready to talk to” is to be privileged. What success in life can measure up to the possession of true friends, what ordinary pleasure, what achievement of position or power, what valuable keepsake, what measurement of gold? I think Saint Paul, curmudgeon though he could be, would allow me to make a slight adaptation of his famous words:
“Friendship suffereth long, and is kind; friendship envieth not; friendship vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.”
The joys of life are multiplied a hundred-fold when they can be shared with friends. So too can friends help lighten the burden of the horrors of the ‘real’ world – to which world in newspapers and television screen I will now let you return.
