The Obligation to Be Happy by Linda Pastan

It is more onerous
than the rites of beauty
or housework, harder than love.
But you expect it of me casually,
the way you expect the sun
to come up, not in spite of the rain
or clouds but because of them.

And so I smile, as if my own fidelity
to sadness were a hidden vice—
that downward tug on my mouth,
my old suspicion that health
and love are brief irrelevancies,
no more than laughter in the warm dark
strangled at dawn.

Happiness. I try to hoist it
on my narrow shoulders again—
a knapsack heavy with gold coins.
I stumble around the house,
bump into things.
Only Midas himself
would understand.

The title says it all. There will be numerous times in our lives when we will face the obligation to be happy. Working at a country club, I know this feeling quite well. It doesn’t matter how rude a member is being; if they aren’t happy with something, it is your job to slap that phony smile on your face and make it all better. That is an obligation to be happy in a moment of anger and frustration. There is also an obligation to be happy in a moment of being put on the spot. For example, there was a wedding at the country club this past summer—one of many. However, this particular wedding was the ugliest wedding I had ever seen! The hideous purple and green (lime green might I add) decorations made me wonder if the bride was color blind or if the groom got a hold of the fabric swatches. Anyway, after getting the Veranda room set up for the reception dinner, the mother of the bride waltzed into the room and was absolutely gushing. She then proceeded to say, “It looks fantastic! Don’t you just love it?!” A co-worker of mine glanced over at me as they tried not to explode with laughter, for just minutes earlier I was going on and on about how horrendous the room looked, drenched in Barney Purple and Nickelodeon Slime Green. However, I had no other choice but to push my personal opinions aside and slap that phony smile back on my face and tell her what she wanted to hear: “It’s just so lovely and chic. Very nice taste.”

It comes about in circumstances such as these when “you expect [happiness] of me casually, the way you expect the sun.” Sadly, society has placed the burden of masking our true emotions in order to fulfill proper social etiquette. The comparison of happiness to “a knapsack heavy with gold coins” emphasizes that happiness can be gilded in different situations. Sure, you may have all these gold coins, but what good are they if you have nothing to buy with them and if they are creating strain on your back? The same goes for happiness. Others may envy your happiness however, how do they know that you are genuinely happy? How do they know that it is just an act that is genuinely eating at your heart and soul? The truth is that they don’t know. The obligation to be happy will live on through the human existence as a defense mechanism. For if someone pretends to be happy, they may eventually believe that they are happy—even if deep down inside they are not.