The First Tinge of Unhappiness

Pre-Script: Either this entry will mean a lot to you, or you won't find much interest in it. You should realize by the fourth paragraph or so if you really want to invest yourself in reading it. Thanks, either way, for simply letting me write it here, it's certainly a self-explanatory process, a work unfinished. The italics are text borrowed from my journal and/or the classic novel Frankenstein.

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Yesterday was my name day, today is October.

So started the first tinge of unhappiness I've let creep into my stay here in Hungary, a scribbled entry late Saturday night into my journal of all-things-important.

We had spent a lazy Saturday in Nyireghaza: shopping at the market, visiting an ESL bookstore, napping and soaking in a thermal bath. I was nice to relax, and the brownies were awesome, but I had forgotten that I must often play the role of instigator. Liz and Kat had an awesome time in Tokay, flush with wine and festival, but we had been tricked by the grey skies into feeling too lethargic to take the train ride.

After a wonderful pizza meal, we listened to a Hungarian singer sing some Hungarian songs in a small pub. But after she started to play Alanis Morissette, I think it was more likely that the whole place was listening to us, rather than her. We liked it muchly and sang loudly.

But walking home, I made a precious friend mad or sad or quiet or any permutation of adjectives unhappy. I became the same. A source of much happiness had been lost, even if hopefully only for an evening. As we walked home in silence, I turned to thinking.

But now, as happens on occasions more frequent than rare, I think.

I scrawled into the journal, a few lines below the introduction. When I get on the tangent of how unhappy too much thinking can be for me, we know were in for a long episode of contemplative thought made permanent in scrawled penmanship.

Suddenly sullen, I began a one-month evaluation of my Hungarian happiness. I compared it to North Carolina, where I invented a friend, who to this day might be fact or fiction. As if to prove a point, this character was the product of fiction, discussed fiction with me and encouraged me to understand fiction. It was almost as if I was Piscine, the hero of Life of Pi, creating a soul-sustaining fiction aboard a lifeboat lost at sea.

I considered the fountains of happiness that I draw from here in Hungary, and also the drains of unhappiness. There are many in both category. I am good at creating the former, even if there are naturally more in the later. This process must not be an unusual trend abroad, Gaines' last online journal entry was titled "On the Happy List," and explained 12 things that make her smile.

In that moment of discontent, I didn't want to settle on imaginary happiness. I didn't want to need to depend upon fictitious enjoyment. I didn't want anything less than real happiness, rooted in the nation and culture that I am living in for the next nine months. I wanted my reality to be soul-sustaining by itself. Contemplating happiness, walking home in the dark, I realized I had yet to find all that. And for just a moment, vaguely disenchanted, I became bored with Hungary.

(Among my failings) perhaps attention span is the greatest.

I scribbled in a nearly illegible fervor, after a list of what I consider to be personal failings. I'm not sure if I intended for the handwriting to be decipherable or not. Next came a horribly written jeremiad against the evils of modern attention spans and the media, it was almost like an opinion papers for one of my journalism classes except largely unintelligible.

Uber-modernity blah blah blah fleeting emotion blah blah blah amusing ourselves to death blah blah blah.

Imagine my surprise, riding on the train the next day, when Frankenstein -- proving to be a marvelous existential read -- bemoaned the same curse I had been trying to describe the night before:

…a traveler's life is one that includes much pain amidst its enjoyments. His feelings are forever on the stretch; and when he begins to sink into repose, he finds himself obliged to quit that on which he rests in pleasure for something new, which again engages his attention, and which also he forsakes for other novelties (206).

I had called it the need for an even bigger distraction from the drag of life, Mary Shelley uses words so much more deeply rooted in feelings. I chose the word adventure, she decided upon travel. Whichever your preference, I was worried Saturday night that this Hungarian flash of adventure, this Hungarian passage of travel, would end in enjoyment before ending in nature. I feared the boredom that haunts me as much as thinking or the addition to happiness.

I opined that getting through life is a terrible way to live, whether as life-long principle or strategy to tackling the remainder of my stay in Hungary. How much further can you get from the Life is short, live it up; see all you can, hear all you can, go all you can motive that I've preached to children in two continents and four states? How much further can you get from the lessons of sheepshead to go big or go home?

I'm happy I wrote optimistically, even in a moment of doubt. I would have it no other way. And in that search for the sustenance of soul and self in Hungary, I will no doubt fulfill my long-ago written definition of travel: to find happiness in places where you never knew happiness to exist. And perhaps, the flowers of Budapest will shine in even brighter color than ever before, and questions will linger as challenges, not haunts.

What is happiness? Love? Life?
Who am I? What am I? Why am I?

Shelley treats us so well again, just eleven pages later, when she dazzles, how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery (217). In all honesty, things are not that bad in Hungary. I am not being chased by an eight-foot tall behemoth of unquestioned fury, even if all the demons here are indeed of my own construction. I am healthy and safe and marginally well-fed, even if my shower leaks and the children are occasionally inconsiderate. Life is hard, but with time and space for both happiness and reflection. Life is interesting, with both good and bad to revel in and learn from. Life is alive. And I am rather excited to turn flip cup into an English-learning game.

Post script:

Tolstoy's War and Peace : "Who are they? Why are they here? What do they want? And when will this all end?" Cadet Nikolai Rostov, injured in war against Napoleonic France.

Jeremy Jewett's inner-most-thoughts on being alone in Hungary: "Who am I? Why am I? What am I" 

First, I am far less pessimistic than Tolstoy. Second, apparently all I have to do is create characters in my mind, have them talk, and I will be regarded as a literary genius.