Life is For the Living

Another quotation that I like is one that my grandmother used to say: "Life is for the living."
We called her Grossmutter, which is German for "grandmother".
(Which is a little strange: how many people use the formal name "grandmother", instead of a nickname like "grandma", "grammy" or "maw-maw"?)

Grossmutter came from Germany to the United States in the early 1930s. She was following Grossvater, who had come to New York in the late 1920s. They married and had three children: my father, my aunt, and my uncle Johnny.

Grossmutter lived through her fair share of tragedy. She grew up in central Germany during World War I. She lost a number of relatives in Germany during World War II, including her younger brother, who was a soldier in the German military. He was run over by a German tank in a road-side accident in northern Italy. He was everyone's favorite in the family.

What was probably her biggest loss was when Johnny was killed at age 12, after being run over by a truck in their town in Long Island. He was riding his bicycle; heard the truck behind him; swerved to his right; bounced off a parked car; and fell under the back wheels of the truck.

The tragedy was terrible: in the weeks before his death, my father spoke to us for the first time about how Grossvater had dealt with Johnny's death. My father told us of a family get-together soon after Johnny died, where his father ripped open the front door, and called out: "Johnny, come home!"

But, as family, they never spoke about Johnny. My aunt was suprised to hear that my father had talked at all about Johnny: in the 53 years between Johnny's and my father's deaths, my father and his sister never talked about Johnny, or about his dying.

My father died suddenly - his COPD robbed him of his breath in his sleep. Maybe he felt his end was near, and decided to tell us about Johnny and some stories about him and his passing.

"Life is for the living." - the quote becomes more profound when you understand that Grossmutter buried her youngest child; her baby.
But Grossmutter chose not to dwell on the dead - she thought that life is to be lived, and not spent on thinking of those who have gone before us.

It can be seen as a strange way of thinking about happiness, but Grossmutter lived through the tragedies, had a happy life, and lived well into her 90s. She was tired toward the end, but spoke about looking forward to seeing loved ones again.

"Life is for the living" - People die, but we are alive, and we must live our lives, and be happy.

It is Better to be Alive

I'd like to start writing about happiness by examining the attitude of: "be happy because you are alive".

In other words, just the fact you are alive should make you happy.

I have encountered this idea several times in my life - one of the first times was as a younger teenager, watching the 1987 movie "Full Metal Jacket".

Full Metal Jacket is an intense movie, and I especially like that it launched the career of R. Lee Ermey.

One scene in Full Metal Jacket that sticks in my memory takes place soon after the main character (Private "Joker") arrives in Vietnam in the late 1960s. He is a war reporter, and he witnesses a mass burial - a burial of dozens of civilians caught in the war's crossfire. The bodies are dumped into a shallow grave and are covered with a white powder, presumably lye.

Upon witnessing all these dead civilians, and how their bodies are being put into the ground, Joker observes (in a voice-over):

"The dead know only one thing: it is better to be alive."

My interpretation of Joker's line is that it doesn't matter what the dead know: it is always better to be alive than dead.

This statement, then, is one of the elements of why I think a person should be happy. Let's call it Rule Number One. (Where the Rules are in no particular order.)

1. It is Better to be Alive

Be happy because you are alive, and not dead.

Welcome to Primal Happiness

Hello, and welcome to Primal Happiness.

My name is Christoph Roggenkamp. I'm an attorney, and an expert in electronic discovery.

I am also interested in human happiness.

I intend to use this blog to explore what makes people happy.

I've been thinking about this topic for a long time - about a decade - but this is the first time I've pushed myself to create something concrete. I want to write down my thoughts on happiness, to force myself to articulate what I'm thinking.

As a first step on this blog, I'd like to recommend the Happiness Project. It's a very good starting point for those who are interested in happiness.

That's all for now - I'm happy that I finally got this blog up and running!