Okay, for me to claim that I’ve never experienced a major happiness is ridiculous. For Pete’s Sake, I can recall a book on oceanography for laymen that gave me major happiness. Certainly all kinds of other books, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and music and painting have given me major happiness. More than a few personal relationships, too. However, there are degrees of major happiness. What I haven’t experienced is the major happiness of the highest degree.
Everyone, I’m sure, has a different notion as to the value of different happinesses. I, for instance, would never consider food or sex capable of giving me more than a minor happiness of the first rank. Food and sex are all many people live for, on the other hand. The happiness most important to me is the happiness of achievement–making a thing of beauty or discovering a new, effective understanding of some aspect of existence. Art and verosophy (mainly science).
The rank of a happiness gained through achievement depends on the size of the achievement. To illustrate, I experienced what I deem a major happiness of the fourth rank as a verosopher when, some 45 years ago–before the certified experts in the field, I believe–I concluded that hyper-activity in children was, counter-intuitively, due to insufficient rather than over-abundant energy. The hyper-active kid, to put it simply, is over-active physically because he lacks the energy for self-control.
The major happiness I experienced in developing my theory of temperaments, which explains why his lack of energy limits the hyper-active kid’s self-control, and precede my lesser discovery, was a step higher because a larger achievement than the discovery, and the over-all theory of psychology I constructed, in which my theory of temperaments was just one thing explained, gave me major happiness of the second-rank. Note: I’m talking about how much happiness an achievement gives the person achieving it. This has nothing to do with its validity, only with how valid its fashioner believes it to be. Obviously, if the achievement is eventually shown to have resulted in something of little or no value, its father will experience a major unhappiness.
I think my best happinesses as a poet have only been major happinesses of the third rank. But I suspect there are people, perhaps many people, who have never experienced so exalted a happiness. In any case, I consider the thrill of making a poem that seems good to be a major happiness of the fourth rank, and the delight of getting together a more or less unified collection of poems one considers good a major happiness of the third rank. I feel I’ve done both.
This brings us to what a major happiness of the first rank is. I can only tell you what it is for me. I have to say in advance that it bothers me hugely to do so, for I’ve always admired myself for being independent, for not caring what others thought of me or what I did–at least much less than most others did. Well, the irony is, that what I need to experience a major happiness of the first rank is large-scale recognition of something I’ve achieved as important to the culture of my time. Basically, I need world-acclaim.
I feel, then, that I’ve already experienced major happinesses of the second rank. I want the world, not just a few friends, to treat it as Something of High Significance. Then I would experience a major happiness of the first rank.