GET YOUR HAPPY ON! - a meliorist worldview

I hope you are all able to enjoy your July 4! I am with family. Today we are celebrating an annual family reunion; this is with my father’s mother’s family.

My father’s mother is one of 5 or 6 kids, and each aunt and uncle’s brood outnumbers my small nuclear family two or three times. I can’t keep all of my family members straight. I like most of them a lot; they’re good, honest people.

At times like this, I try to remember Kurt Vonnegut’s thoughts on extended families. He felt that loneliness is society’s greatest social ill, that all of our unhappiness is rooted in ultimate isolation from each other. Vonnegut observed the happiness exhibited by the native peoples of Nigeria and felt that it was cultured by their tightly knit extended families.

He felt that American extended families were not as closely bonded because of attachment to our illusory freedoms. I don’t know if he was right. I certainly do enjoy being able to express myself though. I enjoy being able to say what is on my mind and worship in the way I choose — and many people in other countries do not enjoy those liberties.

I don’t know which is better, but I certainly would like to be able to turn to any stranger and great them as though they were a member of my family. Maybe some day.

Happy Independence Day!

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