V.le Regina Elena, 1/2
90151 Palermo PA
Italy
by Beau Cadiyo
On Sunday, we had a Christmas party. One of our friends brought a date, an artist from London who was visiting Edinburgh for the week, and we three got to talking - about life, love, kids, careers, politics. At one point, I told her that my wife and I were married on our third date. "Wow. Are you happy?" she asked.
People ask this question of themselves and others, directly or indirectly, enough that it can often be safely deflected. Here, though, something about her question, as well as my state of mind over the last year, made me think about it closely. I thought: am I happy? What is happiness? Does it actually matter? Because the context of her question - just after me revealing a fact about my marriage - was important: happiness in a relationship when you are young, or the relationship is new, has a special definition: it is all excitement all the time, exploring the mind and body of another person, dates and drinks and late nights and early mornings. Ten years into a marriage, with a mortgage and investments and kids and common friends, one might understand why JFK said it wasn't the kill, it was the hunt. But is that happiness? Can that level of passion be sustained? I seriously doubt it; hunting might be fun, but a life of hunting without killing doesn't leave much time for meals.
When she asked, I instantly went through a partial inventory of my exes: might I have been happier with them? The Serbian beauty queen, a refugee traumatized by civil war, who used to accidentally send abusive messages to me that were intended for her siblings, and forced her older sister to wipe her butt after she shat because that's what they did as children: I was miserable with her, and the two years I spent in her orbit were such a complete waste of life that, when she later started dating someone else, his friends asked me to talk to him to convince him to break up with her. The nice but simple girl from Indiana who was extraordinarily uncomplicated: wholesome, but absurdly dull, to the point that her conversations revolved around food and running and little else. The cardiologist, who my friends said made the beauty queen look almost kind, creative, and friendly. The bipolar scientist who decided to go off her medication and try to manage her mind with bulletproof coffee and marathons...the highs were bliss, the lows were suicidal.
At ten years with any of them, I would have hated every moment of my life. Thank God that none of them lasted.
So I first thought: compared to all of my other relationships, my marriage is actually amazing. It has its problems, of course, but does that make it unhappy? What would it mean to be "happy" in a relationship? Could a relationship even be "happy"? In order: no, I don't know, and no - people can be happy in a relationship, but that is the responsibility of the individuals, not the relationship. We have something that works for us, and that is, I think, the absolute best result possible. Social media, or media generally, may present an idealized view of marriage, or relationships, and assume certain things that contribute to happiness, but these are not reality, and taking them as the standard by which to judge my life or happiness is foolish.
And I thought: when I was young, I interned for a psychologist who edited a pop-psych magazine. At the time, I thought he was clearly gay, but he had been married to three different women, and was looking for a fourth. He had done some research, and found that in traditional western marriages, the couple falls in love, gets married, and, over time, their level of contentedness with their partner falls; thus, after a while, some get divorced. In arranged marriages, though, often the couple starts out unhappy, and, over time, they start to adjust to their partner; at the end of seven years, I think it was, the level of relationship satisfaction is far higher in 'arranged' marriages than in 'chosen' marriages. There are all sorts of things that this doesn't take into account - the fact that a woman in India might be forced to drink gasoline and then light a match if she tries to leave her marriage, for example - but his theory was that they were more realistic about relationships than most Westerners were. (He tried to start a television show where a marriage was arranged for him by his friends; I left the internship when he was talking to producers.)
Could I be "happy" in another relationship? Depending on the person, probably - and absolutely certainly definitely not with any of the women I dated before. Would I be? There is absolutely no way to tell, and it would be absurdly stupid to try to predict, to second-guess, to wish. And that is part of middle-age - realizing that now, paths are cut off that can never be traversed again. I recently read Kieran Setiya's "Midlife," a book on how philosophy can help us both understand and address questions that may come up with midlife crises. Part of youth, or at least my youth, was the tragedy of believing that I had virtually unlimited potential, a vista of horizons that didn't actually exist. What could stop me from doing everything I wanted to do? I know that this is part of being young, but it was compounded by being American and, particularly, being Californian; anyone could grow up to become President, and, in Los Angeles at least, I was close enough to sports, movie, and music superstars that greatness in almost any field was always within reach. But now...it isn't. It isn't just becoming a "subject" of the King instead of an equal citizen to all, or living in a place that is relatively provincial compared to bigger cities; I'm facing what seems, sometimes, to be increasing irrelevance in the circles I was always part of, in the communities whose membership I took for granted when I was young. At the same time, with ten years of history, and a mortgage, and investments, and kids, and common friends, and the reality of aging coming closer and closer with every death, circles seem to be closing in on me in every way - mentally, emotionally, physically, socially, spiritually. The limits of the world are becoming clearer and clearer.
In The Great Gatsby, at the end, Nick goes to look in the kitchen window at Tom and Daisy. He sees them and notes that "They weren’t happy...and yet they weren’t unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture, and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together." I used to think that this was part of the tragedy, that they were going to stay together despite their conflicted feelings, and Daisy was going to choose stability over excitement, but I now wonder: was Fitzgerald telling us that this was perhaps the most that we can honestly expect, that they were both clear-headedly evaluating their options and going with the best one, and Jay's dreams of ecstasy were unrealistic and absurd? Was the cold chicken on the table worth more than a green light he could never grasp for more than a moment before it receded again? Social media tells us that we should just run a bit faster, stretch out our arms a bit further; a clear-headed view of the world says we should not be happy when we attain our dreams, but be happy with our current situation.
And, in the end, I love my wife; she is absolutely incredible, and I am so glad to be with her and not someone else. I'm absurdly happy, and I am sorry that it isn't obvious all the time.
So I started to answer her, but I was drunk, and a lawyer friend of ours, who I normally can't stand but whose son is a friend of our son, butted in with an inane comment, and I made another drink, and then everyone left and we were left alone in our amazing flat with a fire in the fireplace, two brilliant kids, and plenty of food and drink. Then there was dinner, bath time, a bit of Pixar, letters, and sleep.
In our month in Palermo, we got to Mondello beach two or three times a week. We tried a bunch of the restaurants near the top side - Carolina Bonito, Ganci Mondello, Antica Friggitoria Come Una Volta, Vicius, D2 Daniels, and Roxy Ristofriggitoria - and Le Lunette was, by far, the best of any of them: the arancini were always fresh and warm, the sandwiches rotated and were delicious, and the coffee was strong. The owner and head chef is often out in front, serving the food and making sure everything is perfect; there is a woman at the till who won't smile at you until your third week, but, at that point, she will start cooing over your children and will serve you ahead of other people, smiling and feigning monolingualism if they huff. Oh - and their ice cream is good, too. Really, if a meal here doesn't make you happy, I don't know what will.
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