From Eric G. Wilson’s Against Happiness:

To foster a society of total happiness is to concoct a culture of fear. Do we really want to give away our courage for mere mirth? Are we ready to relinquish our most essential hearts for a good night’s sleep, a season of contentment? We must ignore the seductions of our blissed-out culture and somehow hold to our sadness. We must find a way, difficult though it is, to be who we are, sullenness and all.

In a word: precisely. While purely self-indulgent doom and gloom are all too present in America’s mall food courts thanks to your friendly neighborhood Emo kid, melancholy of the intellectually productive variety seems to be one of our most limited resources.

I have heard my mother and countless other mothers say that the only wish they have for their children is that we will be “happy and healthy.” My mother often uses this phrase as a sort of Liberal code signifying her disapproval of those in our super-Catholic acquaintance who probably kneel at baptisms to pray that their babies don’t end up queer, but its meaning goes beyond that. American mothers hope that their children never have to experience too much of life’s unpleasantness. They hope that we will be successful without having to suffer too much, fulfilled without having to search too far.

The sentiment is tender, but anesthetizing. I hope instead that we will be useful and aware, that we will translate the sorrow that should naturally flow from manifest injustices into world-changing action so that we may find greater joy in what exists to celebrate.