Here, I was the happiest I have ever been

The Pink song Sober played near the end of my wedding proper, before I urged friends to stick around the fire and help me empty the kegs my parents had bought, before ninety percent of the attendees beat a hasty retreat without even greeting Amber or me.

My wedding had been the best day of my life, surrounded by one of the best weekends of my life. I had never felt happier or more loved. I could not recall a time feeling more that I belonged to a community, a place where things felt right. This was closer to what my life was supposed to be.

Then, I heard, "This party's over. How can I feel this good sober?"

All at once, I realized that I didn't know. I still don't. I've had moments of happiness--dinners with friends, vacations--but they didn't come close to touching me the way my wedding did.

I do not know that I will, for the rest of my life, experience anything that will come close to that plane of happiness, which tinges everything else sad by contrast. It is draining to think that I have seen the high-water mark of my emotional life and the tide will never exceed or even match it.

The purpose of human existence is not to be happy, though some might tell you otherwise. We are meant to be in a state of searching, but the time spent there is small, as hours of delicately making a meal allows only one first bite. Or we are meant to perpetuate the notion of us through DNA and ideas. Our happiness is a way to trick us into that rather than having a sentient species looking blankly because there doesn't see a sense of doing anything else.

I am sometimes happy for no concrete reason, which I find suspicious. I accept it, trying not to look too closely at it so it sticks around, but I know it has no anchor. I am happy for the same reason that become depressed: some chemical or other went out of balance. I would, if given the choice, rather be irrationally happy.

I cannot contrive a situation where I would be happier than at my wedding. Even if I signed a contract to rescue all my books from their ignoble state, that would be a small thing. I would not feel happy about that, but I would be glad that it had happened. Seeing Amber graduate from another college would fill me with pride, but pride is not happiness (and her happiness would not see this achievement as an end, but another step in her searching). Other people's weddings, though I may love them, have nothing to do with my happiness. I have fun and am pleased that others have had this connection, but I cannot empathize completely or live vicariously.

Amber and I had a fifth-anniversary party last summer. It was not 5% what I felt at my wedding, if even that. It was an event that we held, which stressed Amber and me out enough to sap the joy.

Of course, all experiences are unique and irreproducible. I will only get married this once. (Even if something happened between Amber and me, I know that I will have had my marriage and would not need another.)

I have at least had this experience of being happy, this touchstone on which I can judge the rest of my life, but it is unsettling to know that, for seventy-two hours in July of 2014, I was the happiest I was ever going to be. Everything else will be a shadow of that.

I worry that I'm going to end up where the only thing that resembles happiness is going to be scraps of nostalgia, these times when I thought I was content. I don't know upon reflection how many moments of genuine happiness I've ever had, but it is fewer than I would like. I don't know what would make me happy, per se. I am functional. I have moments of lightness. But genuine happiness?

The only moments of true emotional depth I have, aside from the nostalgia, is genuine sadness. Not depression, but sadness. It comes at times when I'm listening to piano music, whatever that means, as though I am recalling an echo of a past, tragic life.

I have for the last several years opted for productivity in place of happiness. I have so much that I wish to write and only another fifty or so years in which to do it (assuming no neurodegenerative diseases and the steady progress of medical sciences.) No book or plaudit will bring lasting (or even lingering) happiness but I will feel more fulfilled.

I will covet the supposed happiness of others, though I can't promise these people would agree that they were especially happy. Happiness, or the elements of it, come from experience with other people. These are in shorter supply this year, making wedding day memories all the starker by contract.

Still, it is hard to imagine any will bring me to this level of multi-hour delight. I will have to deal in half or, let us not fool ourselves, quarter and tenth measures strung together in memory. Not a day in which I am profoundly happy, but a season where several small moments of happiness occurred.

Soon in Xenology: School resuming, the year growing shorter, apples?

last watched: The Boys
reading: Blindsight