Be Mine - Richard Ford

An excerpt from Be Mine: A Frank Bascombe Novel by Richard Ford. Copyright © 2023 by Richard Ford.

Happiness

Lately, I’ve begun to think more than I used to about happiness. This is not an idle consideration at any time in life; but it is a high-dollar bonus topic for me—b. 1945—approaching my stipulated biblical allotment.

Being an historical Presbyterian (not-attending, not-believing, like most Presbyterians), I’ve passed easily through life observing a version of happiness old Knox himself might’ve approved— walking the fine line between the twinned injunctions that say: “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” and “happiness is whatever is not bludgeoning unhappiness.” The second being more Augustinian—though all these complex systems get you to the same mystery: “Do what, now?”

This median path has worked fairly well through most situations life has flung my way. A gradual, sometimes unnoticed succession through time without anything great happening, though nothing unsurvivable and most of it quite okay. The grievous death of my first son (I have one other). Divorce (twice!). I’ve had cancer, my parents have died. My first wife has also died. I’ve been shot in the chest with an AR-15 and nearly died myself, but improbably didn’t. I’ve lived through hurricanes and what some might say was depression (it was mild if it was depression at all). Nothing, however, has sent me spiraling to the bottom, so that cashing in my own chips seemed like a good idea. Much quite good contemporary literature, which I read in bed and—if I angle the page right—is all about just such matters, with happiness ever elusive but still the goal.

And yet. I’m not sure if happiness is the most important state for us all to aspire to. (There are statistics on these subjects, graduate degrees, fields of study offering grants, a think tank at UCLA.) Happiness apparently declines in most adults through their ’30s and ’40s, bottoming out in the early ’50s, then sometimes starting up again in the ’70s—though it’s not a sure thing. Knowing what you fear in life may be a more useful measure and skill set. When asked by an interviewer, “Do you feel you could’ve been happier in life,” the poet Larkin said, “No, not without being someone else.” Thus, purely on average, I would say I’ve been happy. Happy enough, at least, to be Frank Bascombe and not someone else. And until late days that has been more than satisfactory for getting along.


Recently, however, since my surviving son, Paul Bascombe, who’s 47, became sick and presenting well-distinguished symptoms of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease—though there’s speculation the Iron Horse really didn’t have it but had something else), the subject of happiness has required more of my attenttion.

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