The Leaf of Happiness
WARNING! Spoilers below the link.
In her Newberry-Award winning children’s book WHERE THE MOUNTAIN MEETS THE MOON, Grace Lin reports the old Chinese fairy tale concerning the Leaf of Happiness.
Once, long ago, a family grew famous for their happiness: uncles, cousins and grandchildren never quarreled, nor was their ever an angry word among them. A bellowing and roaring magistrate, learning this, craved the secret of their happiness for himself. He dispatched soldiers with a small box to the family, commanding the secret of happiness be placed within and carried back to him, or else the soldiers would destroy the home. The grandfather of the happy family happily wrote the secret of happiness on a single leaf of paper which he placed in the box, but, by mischance, the box fell from the hands of the soldiers as they hurried back to the magistrate. The box broke open, the wind snatched the leaf of paper away. Before it vanished, the soldiers saw an odd thing: the paper was written with but a single word on both sides, inscribed over and over again. But what the word was, the soldiers could not see, and the secret of happiness was lost.
When I heard of this tale, I scoffed, doubting that even a storyteller as charming and skilled as Grace Lin, or the wise and ancient mothers inspiring her, could propose a lost word that a cynical and wry graybeard like myself would find satisfying.
After a tale such as this, what one-word answer could possibly be offered as a fitting culmination to the tale, and sum up the secret of happiness?
I am happy to report my scoffing was untoward: let all honest men learn from my error, and creep to conclusions rather than leap, testing each step on the way.
Before the end of the book, the word is revealed.
Do not click this link if you mean to read the book, for my next word is the secret to happiness.
Thankfulness.
The simplicity and wisdom of this is remarkable.
Thankfulness is what allows a man to face an unknown future with curiosity and wonder rather than fear. It is what allows a man freely to know, and love, and serve the truth, rather than dwell chained in a thought-prison of servility, vainglory, and willful ignorance.
The lesser question is what thanksgiving is; the greater is why it unlocks happiness, even amidst the sorrows of life and the shadow of death.
Thankfulness is a supreme pleasure to all men save Narcissus.
Receiving a wage for a job well done is a source of self-confidence, and one can be grateful to have the work and have the fortitude and talent to perform it. But there is no thankfulness needed here: the wage is owed and is your by right. You gave your time and effort in return. The gain is judged to outweigh, if only by a trifle, the loss.
On the other hand, seeing a brightly wrapped and beribboned package beneath the tree on Christmas Eve fills every child with giddy joy, and even a grown man must smile to know family or friend thinks kindly on him. The gift is free and undeserved. You gave nothing in return.
There is no calculation of gain and loss: a gift is bestowed by fiat, out of love and camaraderie, not because it is owed or deserved. All gifts are undeserved, or else they are not truly gifts.
The reason why harlotry is regarded as a prostitution of love, or the betrayal of a marriage is said to adulterate its purity, is because such cheats and sleights are calculated and selfish. Whereas love, when it is pure, is a gift, asking nothing in return; and, when it is true, receiving the whole life and soul of the beloved in return, unasked.
What allows for thankfulness is the same imperfection as allows for unthankfulness.
Let us ponder for a moment the facts of life on Earth. We are neither in paradise here, where all is pure and perfect; nor in hell, where all is pain, despair, regret, and woe.
I have never met any man whose life was perfectly without grief and sorrow. Prophets foretell and mystic dream of such a realm beyond the shores of life and death, but mortal men at most see foreshadowed hints of paradise at times of solemn joy, childbirth and marriage and the like, miraculous moments, but always fated to pass.
Therefore there is always something to complain about, if you wish to complain.
I have sadly met more than one soul who would somehow find matter for vexation even in the Garden of Eden. After all, even Eve, once she heard the voice from the serpent, was vexed that the forbidden fruit was forbidden.
Satan, once the brightest and highest of archangels, was discontent to find an infinite Supreme Being seated higher than himself, and this sense of injured pride was truly what flung him from the crystal battlements of the celestial city into the burning sewage-lake of hell.
By the same token, even Job, once he heard the voice from the whirlwind, will find reason to give thanks, despite his utter loss of all his worldly possessions, the torment of ill health, the death of his children, the despair of his wife, and all the false comfort of his friends.
Christ himself, when betrayed, beaten, mocked, subjected to perjury and perverted miscarriages of justice, bounced from one kangaroo court to the next, scourged, scorned, stripped, and tortured to death before the sneering eyes of the fickle mob, asked forgiveness for his persecutors with a dying breath, asking nothing for himself.
Certainly to know the joyful serenity of a saint that goes singing to his martyrdom is rare, but it is not impossible, for we have such things on record. I do not speak of some event of Roman days made misty with time: Carmelite martyrs, killed during the French Revolution, led by a sister named Constance, went to their deaths singing Laudate Dominum as they mounted the scaffold.
Contrariwise, knowing the loathsome horror of harpy, who seeks to despoil the feast and defecate on the fare, spreading her misery abroad, daily grows more commonplace.
There is hardly a pile of little corpses some politician has not mounted as a soapbox, using the deaths as excuse to browbeat his foes and grasp at greater power for his party; there is hardly a beloved franchise in gaming, film, or graphic novels not overscribbled with the graffiti of political correctness; there is hardly a schoolboy not being groomed by pederasts for predation, either now or soon to come.
In politics, the harpies befoul patriotism, so the simple joy of love of motherland is lost; in economics, the free market is denigrated, any use of energy or motor vehicles, so the work ethic of our forebears is undermined; in diet, no food is safe or wholesome, and meat is murder; in marriage, motherhood is scorned; brides are never virgins but bridegrooms always toxic; and the only thing the harpies find sacred in the sacrament of marriage is prenatal infanticide up to and during birth, dismembering babies alive, and selling their bodily organs for cash.
War pleases the Hell, but cold-blooded murder pleases more. Murdering a blood relative is better still, adding treason to bloodshed, but a mother murdering her own child as a helpless baby is best of all, especially when she claims the child is not human.
Nazis dehumanizing Jews did not due as thorough a job as political correctness renaming babies to fetuses, or clumps of cells, or invading tumors.
Lady Macbeth prayed to be denatured of her feminine softness, so that she could contrive the murders ambition prompted; but Medea was worse, slaying the children of her body her own breasts nursed merely to grieve her mate.
Let us ponder the difference between Lady Macbeth and Sister Constance.
The Scottish lady was of noble birth, and there is no hint in Shakespeare’s text that she had any right reason to be vexed or unhappy with her husband’s position. None of the miseries of Job haunted her, nor did she have even the excuse of retaliation which prompted Medea unspeakable crime.
Nonetheless her first lines in the famous play are to regret the human kindness in her husband’s spirit, which may hinder his ambition. His kindness she vows to chastise with the valor of her tongue, and remove, pour into his ear instead her own remorseless spirit. She is burning with discontent. To be less than wife of the king was unendurable to her.
If Lady Macbeth and Sister Constance came from two different universes, they could not be farther apart in viewpoint. There is no farther apart to grow once the two are direct opposites.
If so complex a matter could be rarefied into a single word, the word written on the Leaf of Happiness will serve.
Sister Constance was thankful, even on a scaffold. Lady Macbeth was not, even in a palace.
There are myriads of thoughts and moods and ways of life in the world, and countless faiths, philosophies, opinions, and worldviews. But even as all the diversity of life can be divided, with minor exceptions, into an animal and vegetable kingdom, so too can all worlds be divided into two kingdoms: the Thankful and the Thankless, the Selfless and the Selfish, the Humble and the Proud. Any of these names will serve.
No man can serve two masters, nor live in to both these worlds. Those who live in the World of Thanks are grateful, and their thoughts are centered on that divine Father from whom all blessing come, to whom all thanks are owed.
Since the Lord God is infinite, and since all creation is his work, the thanks he is owed is never sated. If you exist, you owe your existence to him, and so long as there is breath in your body to praise Him, that breath came from him.
Hence the debt of love is never paid away. No rational man says, “I have thanked you with thanks enough, Lord God: there is no more gratitude to pay.”
The essence of thanksgiving is humbleness.
This is often confused with humiliation or shame, which is a loss of self-esteem, and thinking little of oneself. Not so. Humbleness is not thinking less of oneself, as C.S. Lewis famously said, it is thinking of oneself less.
The thankful man puts God at the apex of his pyramid of priorities and the center of his universe. No matter what else a man should thank, or who else, this is a created being, who would not exist had not God set the matter in place. One cannot be grateful, for example, for one’s nation or ancestors without being grateful for the maker of the world and with life, ancestors and founders included.
Contrariwise, the essence of pride is a sense of injured merit. One is owed any thing one gets; indeed, it is overdue. Nothing is a gift, all things are a repayment of an infinite debt, always owing, never repaid.
Please note the proud man regards himself like God as being owed a debt never sated, never paid off. No matter what he is given, or by whom, or at what expense, or for whatever reason, it is never enough. Nothing is satisfactory.
In large things or in small, thankfulness is naturally humble and unselfish, since to give thanks is to bow one’s head in grateful joy toward the giver of a gift.
When Caesar calls on Amyclas the fisherman to bear him through the stormwave to the far shore, he boasts that not even the gods can bar his way, for fate has made him Caesar. The fisherman, because of his poverty, fears no despoilation of his goods, for he has none, and is willing to carry Caesar in his boat.
When the boat safely makes shore, Caesar thanks himself and his own greatness, and speaks no word of gratitude to Amyclas who risked life and boat to ferry him.
Compare this to the tale told of Alfred the Great, who, when wandering alone and anonymous, is offered shelter by a peasant woman, who tells him to mind the mealcakes baking on the griddle. He is inattentive to his task, lets the biscuits burn, and the old woman strikes him. Unlike Caesar, this king sees that the women’s home, while only a ramshackle hut, is hers, and the foods he wasted hers as well, and he is so grateful for her kindness that he forgives the blow, indeed, may have deserved it, despite his royal blood versus her low estate.
Such is the difference between Pagan and Christian worlds. No one of Caesar’s world would grasp the notion that Caesar owed Amyclas anything aside from the largess promised as a wage.
It is not that Christians do not know pride. We do. We are merely not proud of it.
Pride is indeed the harpy’s feast, where what seems savory is filth fit only to vomit away. A man can sustain himself on pride only for a time. Love is substance. Love is life.
This leads to the greater question of why this thanksgiving leads to happiness. In a sense, the question answers itself: to treat all things as gifts, is to treat all things as sources of joy. A sad soul is tormented by the ghosts of regret of days past and haunted by the specters of fear of days to come.
But given that our sad pasts could have been more sad, and our sins could have been unforgivable, but were not, joy for what failed to happen is no less rational a response to past ills than regret for what did.
Sorrow will surely come with some tomorrow: death claims all living flesh, and oblivion all fame. But, again, a childlike sense of curiosity and wonder is no less rational a response to unknown futures as fear for what might.
And, once life is done, endless joys in the country of light await us, robes of white and crowns of gold, songs and feasting and honor at the great feast of the bridegroom, when Christ weds his Church. Therefore rejoice and be exceeding glad, even when you suffer for the sake of Christ.
One who choses to dismiss this promise gains nothing, for he speculates beyond his knowing. Believing the grave is oblivion is an act of blind faith, not a matter of fact; whereas believing the reports of those who hear voices from heaven or see visions beyond death is not a matter of blind faith but of judicious prudence, not one whit different from jurors hearing witnesses at a trial, and weighing their credibility.
Moreover, in the world of the unselfish, happiness is possible because freedom is possible, which it is not in the world of the selfish.
The unselfish man is humble, as has been said. He approaches the truth as a beggar approaching a king, with his palms open and head bowed. A wise man knows he knows nothing, and so he does not reject knowledge when it comes, but puts aside his pride and self-love and learns.
Only Narcissus hates to learn, because he cannot tolerate to be corrected. To admit he learned the truth is to admit he was wrong before, and this he will never do.
The unselfish man has room in his heart to love the truth for its own sake. Even a painful truth, one that is avowed as truth much against one’s will, if puts before oneself, this is an act of love.
The proud heart has no room to spare. Narcissus sees no face but his own, which, to him, looms larger than earth and sky.
The grateful man, once he learns the truth shakes shadows from his mind, all fond illusions and self-deceptions. He sees himself as small and meek and sinful, for this is merely the true condition of man, and he has no pride to prevent himself from owning up to the truth. He serves the truth because he sees his own proud imaginations are not worth serving. And in service he finds joy. How could he not?
Woe to the ungrateful man. All these joys are not merely unknown to him, they are unknowable. He does not learn, love and serve the truth. He is backward in this as in all things. He is taught to serve before he is told what he serves. His service is blind.
The ungrateful man must be taught to be ungrateful by some treasonous teacher or flattering snake who tells him that the world owes him more than the world gives. He is owed the medals of heroism even without doing any brave of selfless act; he is owed the palm of martyrdom without suffering for any cause; he is owed the wealth of the wealthy without earning or inheriting, merely because he says he is in need of it; he is owed the honors paid scholars for spreading ignorance and deterring scholarship; he is owed the lauds paid philanthropists for urging the state to take money from other men, not him.
He is owed canonization into sainthood for breaking the laws of morality, particularly sexual morality. To be a virgin is shame to the selfish, and to be a sodomite is to mount the peak of moral high ground. And on and on.
Once he is loyal to this world, the ungrateful man feels he is owed everything, honors, palms, wealth, lauds, and need not stir his pinky finger to earn any of it. Reality is all that stands in his way, and the stubborn facts. He vowed hatred toward all who speak of reality or who promote laws and customs taking reality into account. Facts do not care about his feelings. In retaliation, he avows his feelings never again to care about facts.
He must preach falsehood not because he believes it, but because it is false. And so, without a blush of shame, even under oath, he will say man can get pregnant and have abortions. He will say anything that supports the world he serves.
Service to the false world leads not to love, but to smugness and self-satisfaction. Hearing that reality contradicts him merely make him feel he knows a truth more esoteric than truth, and sees a secret reality more real than reality. He cannot know anything, since knowledge contradicts his world: to Narcissus, everything is a narrative, words without meaning meant as weapons to control the weak.
Such ignorance is self-imposed, and it can only be imposed by smugness, by a sense of vainglorious superiority in mental and moral accomplishments. The fool thinks himself wise, because he dismisses wisdom as folly, before examining it.
He also must generate a sufficient snow blizzard of false facts to jam the gears of any conversation: hence, when cornered, and asked to produce witnesses or evidence, many a man of the world of pride will have a dozen authorities at his fingertips, mountains of junk science, endless streams of trite and impossible statistics based on faulty methods or mere lies, usually promoted by some accredited authority, the UN or the AMA or the EPA, who were paid to generate this humbug.
And, if the smokescreen of fake news and junk science fails to impress, the world of pride merely mislabels and misnames things, so that the word “cisheteronormative” makes virtue sound bad, or the word “gay” makes abomination sound funloving. Is no longer means is, and no scholar can define what is a woman, not even a federal justice of the Supreme Court.
See the essay of George Orwell on Newspeak for details.
Please not that Narcissus is not ashamed of his ignorance, but proud. He think that common sense is meant only for the common man, whom he regards as common ruck. Anyone can say man is man and woman is woman. Only the truly enlightened, who can look beyond truths and see that the only truth is lack of truth, only the sharp-sighted and wise, who can detect that all the world is meaningless void, can speak rank stupidity, and think it is secret wisdom.
All this is false knowledge and anti-knowledge. It is willful ignorance, and an excuse for insolence. It is vanity, vainglory, virtue-signaling, and smugness.
Such smugness drives out love. Whatever goodness and kindness might otherwise be found in his frame, is driven, word by word and thought by thought, down the ever more slippery of slippery slopes from vice to sin to abomination. At first, he asks only that sodomy be legalized in the name of mercy; then he asks sodomy be honored with the sacrament of marriage, in the name of equality; then he demand cakebakers and vendors be forced by law to desecrate marriage, in the name of antibigotry; then he commands your children be groomed for pederasty by schoolmasters and Disney drag queens, and taught how to prepare the tender young anus to receive the love of Sodom. At this point, there is nothing but hatred and selfishness and sin in his heart. Humanity is left behind. He is a monster, preying on children.
This is merely one example, the one most clearly on display in the public square, no doubt during Pride Month. There are other sins and other corruptions in other areas, when envy drives economic policy, or powerlust drive politics, and many a man from the world of pride seeks mass murder as his goal, lacking only the organizational genius of a Hitler, or the political position of a Stalin or Pol Pot.
Many are the men dwelling in the world of pride who wish you ill, to rob, enslave, and kill, and all you know and love, because your world cannot coexist with his. Your world of reality cannot coexist with his world of Cloudcuckooland. He merely lacks the present power to do this, so he contents himself with pulling down monuments of men you honor and desecrating sports and games and stories you enjoy.
He blames you for his misery, because he deems your love and service to the truth is as arbitrary as his slavery and self-satisfaction with neurotic lies, that is, merely something you invented out of your ego, not something you discovered when humility opened your eyes.
In the world of thankfulness, humility brings joy, because only through humility can one learn and know and love the truth, and serve it.
In the world of pride, all is backward. There is no learning, leading to love, leading to service. Instead, service is slavery, leading to vanity rather than love, leading to willful ignorance rather than knowledge.
He serves nothing but the nothingness. This would seem to be a freedom, for he is a man without a master, but not so. Rather, he is an orphan without a father, an exile without a motherland, a hobo without a home, a hermit without even the companionship of silent angels to keep him company.
And he lives in fear. Even as ingratitude poisons the past with endless regret, it poisons the future with hopeless fear. If there is a man who dwells in the world of pride who is not afraid of ecological catastrophe, population bombs, mercury in fish and chlorofluorocarbons in the ozone, not afraid of the patriarchy, not afraid of cisheteronormativity, not afraid of racism, not afraid of the KKK, not afraid of the neo-Nazis, not afraid of White Supremacy, not afraid of fascism, not afraid of the Proud Boys or the Oathkeepers or the Boy Scouts or Catholic schoolboys in red baseball caps, I have yet to hear a rumor of such a one. Even if there were a man-jack among the haters who did not feel the fear and victimhood status that gives him the moral high ground, he would and could never say so in public. For he fears his peers most of all.
Hope and wonder he does not know. Curiosity he never expresses. He is interested in no debate, and he has nothing more to learn.
The idolater in the modern day idolizes himself. He is his own jealous god, and will not tolerate to be mocked, nor dare he think of himself as less than omnipotent. Remember, he does not believe his beliefs because they are true. He calls them true because he believes them, and be believes them before serves them, as a slave in chains.
For such a wretched soul, self-centeredness bring misery, because only pride can chain the soul to vanity.
Only pride is stupid enough to listen to self-flattery and take it as gospel. Only vainglory is addictive enough to cripple the will, and make the fool willing to replace knowledge with willful ignorance, and ignorance that he calls a higher knowledge, of which he is proud, and scorns any who contradicts him.
No man can be happy in such a world. No compliment given him will please, because it is always less than he is owed. His great vaunt of pride is his helplessness, his victimization, his sense of injury. Life has cheated him, and nothing he does in retaliation is unlawful now, not even murder.
There is nothing but himself and his ever-bloated and ever-emptier ego filling his ever-shrinking universe; he secretly knows he is a worthless vampire, hungry for honors he has not earned, deceived by self-imposed self-flattery, drained and abused by his own pride, robbed of joy.
He has never gotten his due, nor will he ever. The wound to his self esteem, since is inflicted by the nature of reality itself, can never find balm. Woe and regret are his sole companions.
For he lives in a world where he has never received a gift.
The one word Narcissus is denied is this:
Thankfulness.