The Lure of Anton Chekhov for an American Reader

         "There ought to be a man with a hammer behind the door of every happy man, to       remind him by his constant knocks that there are unhappy people, and that happy as he himself may be, life will sooner or later show him its claws, catastrophe will overtake him - sickness, poverty, loss" 

                                                                               - "Gooseberries" Chekhov

               "There is no such thing as happiness, nor ought there to be"
                                                                               - "Gooseberries" Chekhov

          Recently I came across the most recent list of the top 10 happiest countries in the world, as expected the all the Scandinavian countries were listed and Australia but one country that was not was the United States of American. This may seem odd to some because we live in the land of opportunity, the place where we can do anything we want and achieve anything as long as we work hard for it. This I believe is where the problem of our level of happiness comes in.
         From a young age we are led to believe that we deserve and ultimately will achieve happiness (I am throwing my net broadly, fully aware that in many cases what I say does not apply). We are told that our perfect mate is out there, that we can and will get that dream job with the great pay, and ultimately we will live a happy life. But there is another part to this message and that is that sadness, depression and the like are abnormal and must be fixed, particularly with medication. So then those of us who suffer with such things become medicated and work to join the rest of the population in the search for that happiness but in that search we get lost sometimes and hit road bumps. We become so focused on achieving our happiness that when, for women for instance, the 'clock is ticking' we settle because we fear that we will die alone and childless. This then can lead to an unhappy marriage and divorce and weeks of anguish and wonder at why we are not happy. At these moments of gut wrenching and debilitating pain we feel gross and wrong because we do not believe that such feelings are normal and that something is wrong so we hide it. Even when we are not in these states do we hide things that give us a sinking feeling; we avoid the idea of death and though we are all aware of its presence we pretend that we are in fact immortal and we will not be touched by it. In essence, in the United States we do not have what Chekhov terms as the "man knocking on the door" but rather we ignore the unhappiness of the world and continue to believe that we deserve and will experience eternal happiness.
          It is for this reason that I often feel so troubled with my fits of depression (here used loosely) because I believe that they are abnormal and must be done away with so that I can continue on my path of happiness. This struggle within myself causes me almost more agony than the fits and thoughts that come with those fits, this is why I am so drawn to the stories of Anton Chekhov.
          Chekhov lived and wrote in the build up to the Russian revolution. He was the first Russian author to utilize the short story, before him there were just big novels like Tolstoy's masterpiece Anna Karenina. I started reading his stories for my Chekhov and Munro master's class and after reading them for three months I am finally able to put into words why I am so drawn to his work.
           In his stories, Chekhov does not often present a 'happy' ending, rather his characters live more or less in a state of 'reality'. A reality in which people suffer, die, are perpetually unhappy and so on; though for many Americans I can see how his work would seem depressing, I find it liberating. Chekhov is my solace, he makes me understand that unhappiness is natural and that the acceptance of it and to a point embracing it is far better than pushing against it. The lines from the story "Gooseberries" - part of Chekhov's trilogy - are possibly some of the most important words I have ever come across in my life because they, in a way, give me permission to "throw off" this allusion that I must consistently be happy and allows me to accept the unhappiness, the "catastrophe" of life that is inevitable.
            If this blog seems like a bit of a rant, I did not mean it to be, rather I mean it to be a chance for readers to look at how our society approaches the concept of happiness and then maybe consider experiencing how Russians approach that idea. Do I believe that the Russian concept of happiness is better than ours, no, but I do believe that a balance is necessary and Chekhov provides that balance.