Sometimes We're Happy

Some people watch the videos of Bow displaying, and they say weird things about how he seems depressed. Sometimes they even preface their comments with "you don't have to be a primatologist to see that..." Well, I don't know about being a primatologist, but you at least have to have seen some other chimpanzees displaying before you make that judgment. It's a normal behavior for chimps, whether in the wild or in captivity. They don't do it because they are angry or sad or depressed. They do it because there's an urge to do it, and chimps are very uninhibited. When they have an itch, they scratch. When they feel a need, they find some way to meet that need. They are not embarrassed to show how much they enjoy food. They are not embarrassed to show how big and strong they think they are, either.

Which is not to say that Bow is never depressed. Sometimes he gets depressed. Sometimes I do. Now, by this I don't mean clinical depression, but a momentary sadness. Neither of us are getting exactly what we want all the time. Most humans -- and most chimpanzees -- don't. Our desires are frustrated. Our hopes are crushed.  Sometimes we get upset, and sometimes we express that, but then the feeling passes, and we move on to a different kind of mood, a different emotion, and we have a whole set of behaviors to express each one.

Yesterday, on my walk, I noticed that the phlox was in bloom again. This reminded me of my children's book, In Case There's A Fox. "When Sword goes for walks, in the fields full of phlox, she is always concerned that she might meet a fox."

There was no fox, but I did see the first ripe blackberry of the season.

I picked the blackberry and proceeded on my way to the road, where I noticed some calves in the neighbors' pasture.

One of them got spooked, as he felt I was getting too close. So I went turned back, and on the way to the house I picked another, smaller blackberry.

I washed the blackberries by the rock garden outside.

Then I went back into the pen and gave the blackberries to Bow.

Of course, those two blackberries were just symbolic. It's a way to share every aspect of my walk with him. I also showed him the videos. For lunch, among other treats, we had fried bananas.

Is Bow super happy every moment of the day? No, but I don't know anybody who is.

We change our feelings many times a day, just as we change our posture. Right before dinner time, I noticed Bow doing something unusual. Something I had never seen before. He was walking around in circles, with one finger on his face.

I was getting ready to prepare dinner, so I was not inside with Bow, but I decided to go in and investigate. I was worried that something might be wrong. Bow kept going around with the finger on the side of his face, close to the nose. I asked him why, and he did not answer, but he let me remove the finger from his face. There was nothing wrong with the finger -- or the face. He seemed to be doing it just for fun, because he could. Afterwards, he decided to groom my big toe.

I have seen Bow playing blind man's bluff by himself before, covering up his eyes and walking all around the pen. The finger on the face seems to be a variation on that. It's called playing.

After dinner, and after everything was cleared away, Bow was very playful with me, wanting me to chase and tickle him, before he lay down to sleep, on top of one blanket and covering himself to the waist with the other. After that, I sang him our song, and he grunted happily as I wished him a good night.

We all have moods. We all get sad sometimes, because of the things we cannot have at the moment that we might like to have. Bow is no different. But all in all he is emotionally resilient, and his life is pretty happy. Could it be better? You bet! And it's in the hope that it will get better that we carry on each day.

Bow in Sunshine and in Rain

So what was Bow doing yesterday, while I was having all those encounters with rabbits and a turtle? In the early morning, after breakfast, he was sleepy.

Later, there was a period of sunshine, and Bow took advantage of this time to enjoy the outer pen.

 While there was sunshine he was happy. He lounged about and made happy faces.

There had been rain the night before, so the bench was not entirely dry, but Bow enjoyed perching on the edge and soaking in the sunshine.

Eventually he assumed his favorite position, lying on the top rim of the bench.

And there he stayed for a good long time, being perfectly content and happy and at peace.

And then, in due course, the weather changed. It started raining, softly at first and then in torrents. Bow asked to go back inside. And there in the dimness of the inner pen during a storm when the clouds seem to put out the sun, Bow was not-so-happy.

Now, I bet you that some people, seeing this video of Bow being not-so-happy will try to post some sort of comment like "He needs to be free. Get him out of that cage. Let him roam free." But Bow is not unhappy because he's in a cage. He's unhappy because it is raining.

I have seen footage of chimpanzees in the wild, sitting out in the rain, getting soaked and looking miserable. Sometimes they display against the rain, and observers call it a rain dance. But their mood and behavior is very much tied to the natural world, and they get sad or depressed or upset by things they don't like and which are outside their control. Not unlike us.

I think that's perfectly healthy. I worry about people who always act happy, no matter what is going on. They can't really be happy all the time, and putting on the fake act or brainwashing themselves into accepting the things they can't change must be eating at the lining of their stomach. We have feelings for a reason. Going against our natural feelings can't be good.

Today I saw one of those be-happy memes. It said: "Happiness is not about always getting what you want. It is about being grateful for what you have." Nonsense! Happiness is about being able to act freely to express your true feelings regardless of how it looks to anyone else.

Sometimes we get what we want. Sometimes we don't. When we are free and unburdened by other people's expectations, we act happy when we get what we want and sad when we don't. And life goes on! Very soon a happy moment can emerge from a sad one, as the sun comes out from behind that cloud. But how would you even recognize it, if you were drugging yourself not to notice the world around you?

If you think these ideas make sense, then you might be interested in my old novel, Vacuum County.

Obedience versus Intelligence

It has been raining on and off every single day for many days now. The outer pen is flooded and Bow cannot go out to play.

Bow is not a saint. He does not walk on water. In fact, he also refuses to walk in water. He does not want to get his feet wet. When he was little and we went outside early in the morning, if there was dew on the grass he would insist on riding on my back rather than exploring.

But it is tedious to be stuck indoors with not much to do, so yesterday Bow asked to go outside. I took him all the way to the entrance of the outer pen and opened the door for him to go out, but he just sat there and stared at the water covered floor and the wet bench, and he did not choose to go.

When Bow is not happy, I don't get to be happy, either. He will keep asking for things, and then when I give them to him, it turns out he didn't actually want them, and then he gives them back to me, and then he asks for more things, which he also doesn't really want.

When Bow is not happy, he makes raspberry sounds and rocks back and forth and interrupts conversations that I have on the phone or on Skype. "Can't you just explain to him that he needs to be quiet so that you can hear what I am saying?" somebody asked me. "After all, he is so intelligent. Surely, he will understand, if you explain it to him."

"He already understands," I answer. "He is intelligent, and it's not about understanding. It's about choosing to cooperate or not."

This is one of the most difficult points to get across to anyone. "If he is so smart, why doesn't he do what you tell him?"

"Because he's smart enough to get me to do what he tells me."

Of course, I don't do everything that Bow tells me to do, either. I might as well ask: "If I am so smart, why don't I always do as he says?"

The answer, of course, is that intelligence is not obedience. Obedience is not intelligence. They are two separate things. Someone who always obeys is not necessarily stupid. He's not necessarily smart. But he has accepted a subservient position to somebody else, and neither Bow nor I are quite ready to do that, vis a vis each other.

True obedience is not about being afraid of the other person. It is not about giving up your own capacity for critical thinking. It is about accepting another person's leadership unconditionally. I wrote about obedience in my recent novel, Theodosia and the  Pirates.  Obedience is a wonderful trait to have. But in my current household, nobody seems to feel sufficient reverence for anybody else to practice the virtue of obedience. Which is to say, we may love each other, but none of us accepts complete and utter subservience to another.

Many dogs are known for their obedience. This comes in handy when trying to prove what they know. A while ago, a friend shared with me a video about a border collie who knew the names of a very large number of toys and could prove it by fetching the required toy on command. The dog named Chaser could prove that she knew over a thousand words, because she never tired of doing exactly as she was told.

When I watched the video with Bow, he told me: "The dog is stupid."

"Why do you think she's stupid?"

He spelled: עושה מה שאומרים. "Does what is told."

He didn't think she was stupid because she understood the commands. He thought she was stupid because she put up with the test. Many people flunk tests ostensibly designed to test their intelligence, but which in fact test their ability to follow directions without any internal motivation.

If Bow would just cooperate with me in proving he has language, he might get a lot of things that he wants, such as, for instance, a companion of his own kind and  a five acre island to be king of. But explaining this to him does not help me secure his cooperation, not because he is stupid, but because he does not choose to play along. He would feel stupid if he did as I asked.

What does freedom actually mean? Does it mean having money, power and everything you could want in return for pleasing others? Or does it mean living only to please yourself?

It depends on what sort of person you are. If you are a border collie with a good master, or a follower with a good leader, then maybe obedience is exactly what makes you happy. But if that is not the case for you, then listening to your inner voices may make you much happier, even if it does not get you any loot, space or companionship.

Ultimately, if you do what makes you happy, then you are truly smart.

Absolute versus Relative Happiness

Now that  A Thousand and One Stories of Pericón de Cádiz has been published, Bow and I are free to pursue other projects. We also have been allowing ourselves more time just to savor the moment and enjoy life. Are we happy? Mostly. Could it get even better? Probably.

 The issue of happiness brings out different philosophies. Some say that happiness is a state of mind, and that we are responsible for our own happiness, because we could just choose to be happy no matter what the circumstances. I don't belong to that school of thought. I believe our feelings are spontaneous responses to the circumstances, and that it's a good thing that we are unhappy when something bad happens to us, because how else will we change a situation, if we have nothing to spur us on to action?


We are responsible for our actions. If we are unhappy but do nothing about it, then our continued unhappiness may very well be our fault. But it's good that we are not capable of being ecstatically happy under less than optimal conditions. Can you imagine how helpful it would be to tyrants if every citizen could simply choose to be happy, no matter what others did to him? Some of these ideas are touched upon in my novel, Vacuum County. Verity does not "adjust well" to being a prisoner, and her unhappiness is what enables her to eventually find a way  to fight the tyranny she has been subjected to.


What about Bow? Is he happy? Most of the time, I think he is. But is he absolutely, one hundred percent ecstatic every moment of the day? Hardly. Do you know anybody who is? Other than drugged zombies, I don't think anybody can be consistently happy  every moment of the day. If they tell you that they are, I would be highly suspicious.


The other day, someone left a comment on my Youtube channel asking: "Is Bow is as happy in his current life as an average chimp of his same age who lives in the wild ? Why or why not ?"


I replied: "Is any person qualified to make absolute statements about another person's happiness? Or relative statements about the happiness of one person in one situation as opposed to another, in another situation? Bow is happy. He enjoys his life very much. This is not to say that it could not be even better with chimpanzee companions. I'm sure it would be, but we're still working on that. Let me ask: Are you as happy in industrialized society as an aboriginal human in the wild? Hard to say, right?" The person came back today with this comment:

"No, it's not at all hard for me to say that, IMO, I'm NOT as happy as an aboriginal human in the wild.And yes, there ARE people qualified to objectively assess a person's -- or an animal's -- level of well-being, based on observable physical and behavioral indications.

The point of my question was merely to get your objective assessment of Bow's well-being without any defensiveness, but it failed."

Even if we ignore for a moment the sudden slippage in terminology from "happiness" to  "well-being", I find the tenor and purport of the statement to be strange. Is this person so certain that a primitive lifestyle would bring him more happiness? If so, why not pursue it?


My response, rather than being defensive, had been open and vulnerable. I've often wondered what it would be like to live as a hunter-gatherer, and while I recognize that there are many things about that lifestyle that are more suitable to humans than the one most of us live under, I also know that my ancestors dropped that lifestyle many, many generations ago, and that I would in all likelihood have succumbed to infant mortality if I had been exposed to the hardships of that life.


But there is more to my doubt than that. Even if I were sufficiently fit to survive, would I enjoy a life  like that? As a woman, would I accept my assigned role? Would I like not having a choice?


And, of course, if you start to think about it from the point of view of someone who never had a choice, you see that the question is kind of moot. How could we ever compare the happiness of one person to that of another? If we become the other person, wouldn't it be impossible to remember what it had been like to be us? I can't even tell if the neighbors are as happy as I am. I cannot say if I would have been happier if I had been living their lives all these years.


For someone to be certain about someone else's emotional state implies that this person is either omniscient, or that he is so arrogant that he cannot imagine the variables involved.


Well, what about Bow? I could just ask him: "Hey, Bow, are you happy? Would you be happier under different conditions? Would you rather live in the wild?" But we probably would not get a straight answer. And even if he did answer honestly, how would he know?


I can tell you this: a few years ago, when Bow was about eight, he once got very mad at me and said: "I don't like you. I'm going to Africa."


I felt a little hurt, but I ignored the part about not liking me and asked instead: "Why are you going to Africa?"


"Because you won't give me chocolate," he spelled.