Happy Families Part 1

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.  Leo Tolstoy

So, before I dive into the discussion of whether Tolstoy's famous statement is true or false, a couple of comments.

First, thank you to all of you who answered the question*.  Five of you responded to my original post, I received two emails and got one answer over the phone.  The answers surprised me in their diversity and differing approaches to the issue.  As a very wise man once said, "The unexamined life is not worth living"**.  Weighing the truth or falsehood of the quote involved a personal examination of one's own beliefs and values around family life and happiness.  A good thing I think.
As you read what I have to say, please feel free to respond, challenge and disagree.  That's what makes this fun.

I'm going to give the explanation for my answer in three parts.  The statement is actually a sentence made up of two independent clauses joined by a semi-colon.  In Part One, I'll talk about the first one "Happy families are all alike."  

True.  In his answer, my brother David made the point that this depends on how you define "happiness" and "alike".  Good point, particularly about the second word.  "Alike" is a word mostly used for sorting and grouping.  It does not mean the same thing as "the same" unless we add the word "exactly".  Preschool teachers often ask students to put like things together.  The objects may be the same except for color or diverse enough that the children must come up with their own sorting criteria.  Objects in each group may be different in most ways but have at least one thing in common.  So it is with our statement.  Happy families are alike in at least one way--happiness.

One might ask--well, what if I don't agree with Tolstoy's definition of happiness?  It really doesn't matter.  We're not defining happiness.  To say that the statement is false would be to say that labeling families as happy or unhappy is not possible--that those labels are perhaps always subjective.  If that were so, people like Dr. Phil and so many other "gurus" in the area of self-help would be out of business.  If there were no way to recognize "happiness", there would be no goal for which to strive.  My brother-in-law Kevin made the point in his email that happiness is nebulous and difficult to capture and define.  Agreed.  But we don't have to define it to declare the statement true.

To address Kevin's point though--words like "happiness", "love", "joy" etc. are certainly experiences to be lived and perhaps impossible to fully describe but I think it's worth making the effort because they are at the heart of the human experience.  Prose is probably the most difficult way to do it.  Music, art and poetry lend themselves better to evoking emotion and capturing images.  And while happiness is certainly a personal experience, it is also a shared one and can be observed from the outside.  For example, there are certain conditions under which I would not believe a person who told me, "I'm so happy".  Using a word does not always make it so.

Because of this discussion, I find myself very interested in the Russian word that was translated "alike".  Does it mean the same thing?  I know that between Spanish and English there are certain words and phrases that do not translate well.  I wonder if that's the case here.  If you know someone fluent in Russian and English, maybe you could ask because it could make all the difference.

So, I'll leave you with a question--if happy families can be grouped together because of their happiness, what are their common denominators?  Any answers to that question are beyond the scope of what I'm doing in the next few posts but it's a good question if you have a family and want to land in that "happy" category.  I have some books to recommend on this topic for anyone interested.  Stay tuned for those as well as Part 2 when we move on to unhappy families....

*To read the responses, go to my original post.  I will quote the other respondents as we go along.

**This is another quote of which to ask, "Is that true?"  I believe it is but I also agree with Mark Twain's response to Monsieur Socrates that "the over-examined life is not lived at all."  Moderation in all things--even deep thinking.