Happiness Achieved

“Sooner or later in life,” wrote the great Primo Levi, “everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite. Our ever-insufficient knowledge of the future opposes it: and this is called, in the one instance, hope, and in the other, uncertainty of the following day. The certainty of death opposes it: for it places a limit on every joy, but also on every grief. The inevitable material cares oppose it: for as they poison every lasting happiness, they equally assiduously distract us from our misfortunes and make our consciousness of them intermittent and hence supportable.” On the other hand, actress Jennifer Aniston notes of her Golden Globe-nominated performance in Cake, “I think getting down and dirty and doing a darker part has made people think, ‘Oh, there’s something different there.’ But I feel like I’ve always been here, and maybe I’ve just latched onto something. I’m just happy to have done it, to prove to myself more importantly that I can indeed take on whatever it is that I want. All of us actors have to be reminded that these characters are within us, that we just need the opportunity to dig deep and pull them out,” so who’s to say?