As an answer to the question "What's wrong with the world," G.K. Chesterton famously replied, "I am." That answer might lead a reader to suppose that Chesterton was both a pessimist and an egotist. Hardly.
Chesterton was great believer in both mankind and in the joy of living life among men and women to the fullest. In a March 2000 essay in First Things, professor David Fagerberg expounds on this theme.
In a letter to his fiancée, Frances, he confesses to being stained with ink from that day’s work (a state of appearance at which Frances would probably not be surprised), and then thinks to add, "I like the Cyclostyle ink; it is so inky. I do not think there is anyone who takes quite such fierce pleasure in things being themselves as I do. The startling wetness of water excites and intoxicates me: the fieriness of fire, the steeliness of steel, the unutterable muddiness of mud. It is just the same with people. . . . When we call a man ‘manly’ or a woman ‘womanly’ we touch the deepest philosophy." Chesterton was pleased to make the acquaintance of various people, many people, any people. He even once thought it would be pleasing to make the acquaintance of all people:
An Invitation.
Mr. Gilbert Chesterton
requests the pleasure
Of humanity’s company
to tea on Dec. 25th 1896.
Humanity Esq., The Earth, Cosmos E.On every encounter, at every turn, with every person, there is cause for happiness. Both the tree and the lamppost, both the friend and the stranger, are equally delightful, for they are splendid and unexplained. They seem supernatural because there is no explanation as to how we should be graced with them, and they seem natural because they are made just for us. The opportunities for happiness are coterminous with being itself. We have been given a world crammed with a million means to beatitude.
Yet, for Chesterton, there was nothing "natural" about this state of happiness. It was, for him, entirely a matter of will.
Happiness is not bestowed, it is accomplished. It is gleaned. "In everything worth having, even in every pleasure, there is a point of pain or tedium that must be survived, so that the pleasure may revive and endure. . . . The point is, that if a man is bored in the first five minutes he must go on and force himself to be happy. Coercion is a kind of encouragement."
[...]
One’s capacity for happiness must be trained, naturally (of course); and it must be trained naturally (in accord with reality). The principle that happiness contains qualifications is a law Chesterton calls "the Doctrine of Conditional Joy," and he explains its corpus juris most lucidly in the chapter in Orthodoxy called "Ethics of Elfland." "According to elfin ethics all virtue is in an ‘if.’ The note of the fairy utterance always is, ‘You may live in a palace of gold and sapphire, if you do not say the word "cow"’; or ‘You may live happily with the King’s daughter, if you do not show her an onion.’ The vision always hangs upon a veto. All the dizzy and colossal things conceded depend upon one small thing withheld. All the wild and whirling things that are let loose depend upon one thing that is forbidden."
Joy is conditional, only the price is not arbitrarily set by fates unseen and gods unknown, as some ancient cosmologies and some lately restored cosmologies would have it. It is not as if human beings could enjoy the world in a rampant, reckless way save that we are not allowed to, though we could be. The doctrine of conditional joy does not describe accidental conditions that must be met before joy will be released by some repressive power (as in, it is necessary to eat vegetables before you will be allowed dessert); the doctrine rather describes the conditions necessary for the experience of joy (e.g., it is necessary to eat in order to live). That a disordered will cannot be happy is not an accidental decree, it is a state impossible by definition. Happiness is contingent upon an ordered will, like seeing is contingent upon having one’s eyes open. The condition in conditional joy is not a fee demanded of us before we are permitted to enjoy the world, it is the capacitation required of us before we can find the world enjoyable. The price for happiness is set by ontological conditions.
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"The test of all happiness is gratitude," Chesterton wrote, and many of us have flunked that test. "Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs?" We feel no wonder at ordinary things; it is no wonder that ordinary things disappoint us. Chesterton could be made happy by the sudden yellowness of a dandelion, but we do not find dandelions delightful if we are constantly comparing them to orchids. "It is not familiarity but comparison that breeds contempt. And all such captious comparisons are ultimately based on the strange and staggering heresy that a human being has a right to dandelions; that in some extraordinary fashion we can demand the very pick of all the dandelions in the garden of Paradise; that we owe no thanks for them at all and need feel no wonder at them at all." The twin brother of this presumptive attitude is despair, and the two make us sick and tired. "Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. It is when for some reason or other the good things in a society no longer work that the society begins to decline; when its food does not feed, when its cures do not cure, when its blessings refuse to bless."
Until we are grateful, we will not find the world miraculous; until we find the world miraculous, we will not find it important; until we find the world important, we will not be happy here. The difference between ourselves and Chesterton is that we don’t think our world important because it seems ordinary, while he thinks his world is important because he is ordinary. "I am ordinary in the correct sense of the term; which means the acceptance of an order; a Creator and the Creation, the common sense of gratitude for Creation, life and love as gifts permanently good, marriage and chivalry as laws rightly controlling them, and the rest of the normal traditions of our race and religion."
This ordinary happiness makes up the essence of Chesterton, and, woven into all his writings, perspicuous on whatever page one opens, it is his gift to those who suffer boredom. A happy saint is just the antidote we need.
Pelosi or Panetta? Cheney or Obama? A tantrum or a sulk?
Me? I'm on to a new life, where those things may matter, but not as a first priority. Frankly, not even as a second or a third.
So little time. So much past time wasted. So much joy yet to be experienced. Like water dripping through a hole in the bottom of a bucket, the finite number of minutes of your earthly existence is being spent. The exercise of your will makes all difference as to the quality of the dwindling remainder. It's never too late to choose until the bucket runs dry.
Choose. Now. Be grateful. Be ordinary. Be happy.
Rob Thomas, Little Wonders
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