The happiest romantic relationship I ever had was a quarter-century ago, when I was in my early twenties.^* It may come as something of a surprise to readers of this blog to see me so write, but the relationship did genuinely make me happy much of the times. Even if it ended under circumstances which were the beginning of my conviction that as a rule you will be punished for saying what you really think about things, I still look back upon both the relationship and my partner therein with genuine fondness. Unfortunately, since no relationship I’ve had since has produced the kind of happiness that one did, I have always lived with a sense of deficiency and lack in subsequent relationships. This persistent sense certainly makes me even more unhappy than I would otherwise be. Perhaps i would be better off without memories of past happiness to contrast with the deficient present, but I doubt I have the faculty of forcing memories out of my mind, and I am not sure I would want to do so even if it were possible to do so. For to push such memories out of my consciousness would feel like a form of gross intellectual dishonesty, a refusal to pay attention to facts about my own life which are important and relevant.

I can say something similar about my professional life. I held by far the best job I ever had when I was in my late twenties. But it swiftly became evident that I would never advance in that career beyond a very junior level — and I mean, so junior a level that even in my supposedly middle-class profession I had live very cheaply from paycheck to paycheck in a condition of permanent of job insecurity. (Again, I would not advance because I had not yet unlearned the bad, self-destructive habit of being myself and forming and expressing authentic opinions about matters of professional interest.)^** So now when I go to my job — a “good” one by most people’s standards — I cannot but have a keen appreciation of how much it is not what I really want to do, and I find myself in a funk rather often. I wake up and must force myself to go to the office. The experience is degraded still further by the memory of a time when I was eager to get up and go to the office.

The takeaway is this conclusion: if you’re “fortunate” enough to enjoy certain kinds of happiness early in life, you will pay terribly for them in the balance of your life. Even the good portends bad.

***

^*For those of you curious people who care about such things, yes she’s the same as the individual identified as “Second Serious Girlfriend” in the Thaumatophile Manifesto. Back to post.

^**Mark my words, the academic job market will break optimists more surely than torture. Back to post.