Happiness, it would appear, sells lots of books theses days. Asked why, the current poet laureate of America, Charles Simic, replies frankly. “It’s an industry, it’s really frightening,” he tells New York Times interviewer Deborah Solomon.
“People need to read a book on how to be happy?” he asks. “It’s completely an American thing.”
Searching for happiness has taken its place as the latest fad. Its pursuit, of course, is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence; but the theme has lately acquired a new intensity.
It has become all the fashion to look for ways to lay hold of happiness. More than ever before, perhaps, our nation of 300 million longs for this often elusive good.
Young people are seeking to be happy. The most highly enrolled course at my neighborhood college deals with happiness as its principal subject.
My age peers, too, are looking for this valued prize. In the hope of catching up with it, many of us are still running after happiness. Lifestyle changes, grandchildren, golf scores─all of these goals, and many others─represent happiness in our fantasies.
One place where you don’t expect to find happiness is in your hat. This statement is belied, though, by the marvelous title Oliver Sacks chose for his book (later evolved into an opera), “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.”
In my own case, the hat is real. For reasons explained by the hatmaker himself, it has enlarged my own possibilities for happiness. Received as a gift at Christmas, my hat arrived with a message from one Jonathan Richards, self-described as “Irish Hatmaker Extraordinary.”
With the hat, Richards supplies both data on the product’s character and advice about living with it. “How to Enjoy Your Hat” serves as the title of this advisory, a title that has raised my consciousness. Until two months ago, I had no idea of a hat’s possibilities for personal uplift.
Until this Christmas I had thought of hats in purely pragmatic ways. Yes, they could protect you from cold and rain. But I failed to see them as sources of joy. I was still living in the backwash of Jack Kennedy. JFK was the national model of hatlessness and, inspired by his example, I came to wear hats only in blizzards.
This new hat, however, has turned me around. It has opened a broad front of euphoria.
By putting me in touch with my ancestors, it even provides a sense of continuity with the past.
“Your hat has been made for you in the shadow of the Dublin Mountains in Ireland by skilled Craftspeople, in rugged Donegal Tweed,” Richards writes. Every time I put it on I can think of those crafty Irish from whom I have inherited much of my very self.
Donegal Tweed, it turns out, resembles the skin of a modern skyscraper. The wool fibers in the hat continually stretch in rhythm to the temperature of the atmosphere. I know vaguely about the molecules in everything being in motion but, till now, never imagined fiber-stretching going on above my head.
Let me hope that this stretching enhances the thought processes going on just beneath the hat.
As to taking care of the hat, Richards, the Irish Hatmaker, instructs the wearer how to deal with the effects of rain or other water damage. “Leave it to dry in a cool place,” he prescribes. If it needs stretching, you should rotate the hat in your hands, firmly pulling the headband as required.
If the hat gets dirty, Richards would have you “clean your hat carefully by hand with a little soapy water and sponge.” An alternative, for him, would be having it dry-cleaned and reblocked.
His last instruction applies to anyone who wants to freshen up the hat or individualize it. “You can do so, he says, “by holding your hat over a kettle of boiling water and allow the steam to soften the fabric, after which you can reshape the hat to your desire.”
Jonathan Richards may be your kind of guy but he's not mine. I cannot imagine taking any of the hat preservation actions that he prescribes. You will never see me standing over a boiling kettle and later lovingly modeling the hat to its original shape.
But this Irishman personalizes the hat, an appreciation that leaves me behind. His last bit of advice makes clear his basic worldview: “Enjoy your hat! and let it talk for you.”
If I start talking to my hat or, worse still, through it, you will know that I am losing my mind. However, for personal representation, I do favor it over the cell phone.
Back to the poet Charles Simic, I find him wise to reject the pop culture approach to happiness. He finishes his interview by offering some of his own advice.
“For starters,” he suggests, “learn how to cook.”
Richard Griffin