Remember Happy?
For a brief moment in time, I was carefree and excited about life. I suspect many others feel the same way about their own pasts.
For me, this period was the 1990s. Perhaps I'm biased because of my age, but I sometimes refer to the 1990s as "peak humanity."
The Cold War had ended, new musical genres were blossoming, and we weren’t tethered to 24/7 tracking devices. With everything now accessible at the press of a button, it feels like everything has somehow lost its value.
More importantly, there was no pervasive existential dread. Before the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, it was generally accepted that at any moment, we could be obliterated by a nuclear blast. The arms race consumed our amygdala, even if it didn’t affect our day-to-day lives directly. The possibility of nuclear Armageddon was frequently featured in popular culture and hung over our collective heads.
Once that threat lifted, during the '90s, it felt like humanity had been given a chance to create a better world. The West cooperated with the East as Communism faded. Suddenly, our mortal enemy became an ally. We were aware of the greenhouse effect and global warming, but the Kyoto Protocol gave us hope that the world could come together to address the problem, much like the Montreal Protocol had succeeded in curbing the use of CFCs. Governments promoted healthy living, and initiatives like "reduce, reuse, recycle" showed that business and government could cooperate to cut resource dependence and restore the biosphere.
There were so many reasons to be carefree, aside from my age at the time. The future looked promising.
Today, we know all of that was laughable bullshit. Some people knew it even then. Many of my readers might point to The Limits to Growth (1972) as an early warning sign. But that’s not the point of this article.
The point is that many of us remember a time when we weren’t consumed by fear. We lived unhedged lives, enjoying what lay before us. Today, every moment is tainted by guilt, judgment, or dread. We wonder about those around us: Do they know what we know?
The contrast between then and now is what hurts the most. Is it really true that it’s better to have loved and lost? Is it better to spend your final years wondering what life could have been like if we had used the opportunity—if we’d taken the warnings seriously while we had the chance?
I miss those days because I remember what happiness actually felt like.
I’m not saying I’m never happy now, but it’s always anchored by guilt. Every decision, every moment of joy, is second-guessed: Am I making things worse? Is my happiness justified?
And it only gets worse by the day: the climate crisis, habitat destruction, ignorant leadership, the creeping return of feudalism, the widening social divide. Objectively, it’s all worse than it was before.
It’s possible my internal interpretation of the environment is distorting reality, but there are enough people like me to validate my feelings. It’s true that we tend to idealize the past and exaggerate the present, but I can’t honestly say I feared for humanity’s survival during the 1990s.
In 1991, as the risk of nuclear annihilation receded with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Doomsday Clock moved to 17 minutes to midnight—its furthest point ever from catastrophe. It’s safe to say that many in the academic world believed humanity was entering a new chapter, one that could lead to enlightenment.
How wrong we were.
Knowing what it feels like to be carefree, how can I look at the world today and feel anything but dread?
Today’s youth are facing catastrophe, but without the anchor of the 1990s, I don’t see how they can fully comprehend just how bad things are. I’m not saying they don’t understand, but if all you’ve ever eaten is shit sandwiches, how can you truly grasp how awful they taste?
Maybe the best part of the 90s was that the music of the 80s died. George Michael? Wang Chung? Gag. The 90s were good for many of us, but looking back, I realize the personal prosperity I had was built on neoliberal economics at the expense of millions in other countries. My biggest client was a little piece of Minolta, and I was self-employed, able to make my hours fit around bicycling the rolling countryside of rural upstate NY. I KNEW that I was living the best part of my life.
I look back on that with some guilt. I wasn't nearly as informed then, but I could see the unsustainability of everything. I felt it by my mid-teens.
I realize I'll never have that happiness again, so I try to concentrate on meaning, which is why I turned to writing. Part of that came from wanting to keep the flicker of hope alive we could pull back from collapse, and that I could be part of that. Meaning isn't necessarily joyous, but it's a pretty solid reason to get out of bed every day, and it came with hope. With this election, I fear I have lost that and can only document the terrifying slide until I get a knock on the door.
Back to music. Curt Cobain predicted Trump being president. No wonder the poor guy took his life.
I think happiness is a mind set, and can be separated from one's circumstances.
I say this from various experiences. I have known people who had been through hell, whose life seemed unbearable to me, but they were happy, smiling, joking, planning their future and obviously enjoying every moment of their existence.
On the other hand, I once lived in a tax haven in a beautiful place, and many of the wealthy men that lived there had achieved everything; successful businesses, great riches, all the toys, beautiful wives, kids, exotic holidays.......but were seriously depressed and sometimes suicidal, often alcoholic or into escapist drugs. It seemed to make no sense.
I do prefer the term contentment than happiness, because happiness to me is temporary; a fun evening with a few drinks can make one happy for a while, but contentment seems a longer state of satisfaction and wellbeing.
How to achieve it? The Dalai Lama says to let go of possessions and cravings, but i can't see myself doing that - not least because I enjoy my boys toys too much! But I do think you can manage how important things are to you. Not just ownership of possessions, like houses and cars, but also work and careers and even people.
I see it like this; when I choose to make something or someone important to me, I give that possession or that person a gift of my caring, or affection, or love, or trust. I make it or them important to me. But here is the thing - it doesn't have to be forever. I always have the right to take it back, or change the rules, or make it conditional - they are my feelings and so are mine to control.
So if I feel someone I trusted or loved has let me down, I can recognise that it was my error to misjudge them and going forward I can modify how much I can depend on them, or choose not to depend on them at all. It was my responsibility for misjudging them in the first place, and it is my ability to change the rules of our future relationship.
Now I am no longer a victim, buffeted and threatened by a world full of risks, but someone in charge of those risks and fully responsible for my judgements and decisions.
How does this relate to the current situation?
To me, Trump is the products of decades of decisions and errors that Americans have allowed to happen, and not corrected when they were able, right back to the Constitution. Even in my lifetime and yours, the writing has been on the wall for anyone to read; greed as the measure of success, treating Blacks and Hispanics as second class citizens, monetising everything and, as I have said many times, running the country for the corporations instead or managing the corporations for society.
So if Trump, or someone like him, was inevitable, then any reasonably intelligent person should have assumed that it would happen one day and prepared for it. Especially after trump having won before!
Right now, many people on Substack seem to assume there are things that can be done to make America like it used to be, and they are unhappy because that seems difficult. It is, of course, impossible for too many reasons to list, and if your happiness depends on it, then you will be unhappy for the rest of your existence.
Alternatively, you can say, "l was happy to have experienced that time when America seemed like that, but that America has now gone, and I need to find somewhere where I can let myself be happy". In short, you can choose to take away the importance of the current situation, and still retain the memory of the past contentment.
You can also choose to take away your commitment to your concept of America, not because you are abandoning America in its time of need, but because America just abandoned you when a majority of Americans preferred Trump. The future America will not only be a place that you won't like, it will be a place that won't like you!
So, if the situation is making you unhappy, decide to be happy and contented despite the circumstances, and choose to reduce your previous commitments to the things you once considered important that are now pulling you down. It really is tour choice.
Sorry that turned out to be so long!