Originally published May 28, 2023, updated August 21, 2024.
They say happiness is only real when shared. “They” being whoever coins cliches. Those words are attributed to Chris McCandless. Cliches capture truth, that’s how they become cliches. Decrying something as “cliche” can be a way to dismiss a truth you dislike.
My reaction to happiness is only real when shared was it discounts happiness you have by yourself—how I’ve had much of mine. A middle school English teacher told me if I was an animal I’d be a fox because I was a loner.1 Her remark stuck with me. Despite solitude I’ve managed to find things that make me happy. I’ll guess you’ve been happy alone. Happiness isn’t “only” real when shared, but shared happiness is better.
Let’s say there’s a bird you’ve hoped to see—some warbler. Or you’ve wanted to see an Osprey dive for a fish. Imagine you see what you’ve wanted, see it alone. Now imagine you shared it. Joy compounds.
Birds aren’t relevant to everybody—so ferns.2 I was surrounded by lady fern years ago as I looked at coyote scat3 by myself. I’ve written about these ferns before. Much as that memory is important to me, it’d be better to look back on if I’d been able to say lady fern is so delicate to another ferner/birder/scat appreciator. Share happiness.
Historically I’ve been somewhat misanthropic, or liked to put forth that impression. Told myself that’s why I’m drawn to solitary pursuits. Sartre: “Hell is other people.”
Like many, I’d misinterpreted that quote. Vox explains: “No, this does not mean other people are the worst and you should hide yourself in a dark, lonely room so that you don’t have to put up with them.”
Kirk Woodward explains:
The line “Hell is other people” in French reads “L’enfer, c’est les autres” or “Hell is [the] others.”…We get a little more of the flavor of the line in English if we read it as “Hell is the Other.” That’s closer to the point, I believe. Sartre says that the Other— that which is not ourselves—is, or can be, a source of our distress.
Both Woodward and Vox quote Sartre’s clarification:
“Hell is other people” has always been misunderstood. It has been thought that what I meant by that was that our relations with other people are always poisoned, that they are invariably hellish relations. But what I really mean is…that if relations with someone else are twisted, vitiated, then that other person can only be hell. Why? Because…when we think about ourselves, when we try to know ourselves…we use the knowledge of us which other people already have. We judge ourselves with the means other people have and have given us for judging ourselves.
The line is from No Exit. Three characters are in hell—locked in a room together. Woodward further elucidates how “hell is other people” really means “hell is the other,” our means of understanding and defining ourselves:
The “punishment of [Sartre’s] three characters is that they will only ever be able to define themselves through the distorting mirrors of other people who reflect them badly, while at the same time they see themselves reflected badly in others as well…in order to see themselves, as it were, from the outside, the characters have to rely on the way that others see them.”
To end this digression, Marnie Binder:
As Sartre argues, the presence of others inevitably changes our world, and the fact that we cannot change nor always control that can be very frustrating. The ways in which others alter our worlds vary, but what is always the case is that we cannot avoid some form of relations with others.
Frustrating and challenging as other people can be, we have no option but to have them in our lives. It isn’t viable to retreat, fox-like, and smugly think “hell is other people,” to ignore that loneliness is its own kind of hell—arguably worse.
I wrote about enabling degrees of bird fervor, perhaps unintentionally implying bird fervor is best on one’s own. It isn’t. Hell is not other birders, though I will yield a group of four birders is preferable to a throng of 25.
The key is to determine what degree of fervor fits a situation, can be shared and enjoyed. One other birder? Subdued fervor. Three other birders? Less subdued—it’s hard to reel yours in when it snowballs with that of others. Shared, it's excitement.
Birding alone a recent morning, I crossed paths with another birder. Normally I’d have waved good morning and moved on, but there was a Black-crowned Night Heron, Nycticorax nycticorax. We each took pictures, acknowledged the fact morning birds are the best birds—the rewards of heeding early weekend alarms.
We went off trail to a good spot for waterfowl in winter, swapped stories of Northern Shovelers, Spatula clypeata. Ended up walking together for a while, chatting, pointing out Great Blue Herons in trees, Ardea herodias. Alone I’d have missed a second Black-crowned Night Heron and a concealed Yellow Warbler, Setophaga petechia.4 Wouldn’t have had anyone to point out a Common Yellowthroat to, Geothlypis trichas.
It was a spot I’ve birded alone plenty of times. That morning, I birded with someone who’d also birded there plenty of times—a stranger before we watched herons. Happiness was better shared.
This past weekend I met up with a longtime fishing buddy to sail and fish. He has a sailboat, surfs, fishes—seafaring guy. I do not fish often as I did. Rectifying that was an aim. When we met years ago we fished most nights. Having introduced him to fly fishing, we fly fish together.
When we met, he caught the biggest fish of that year on an eel. Hooking an eel through the jaw is more slippery than tying an epoxy minnow to your leader with an improved clinch. That year I also intermittently fished eels and lures. Caught my best stripers, Morone saxatilis, on a black 9” Slug-go and purple needlefish.
Non-fly rod success aside, it was the start of my fly fishing-only days. My surf rod collected dust as my Clearwater saw use. When I bought it, I told the shop employee I wasn’t sure I needed a saltwater fly rod. “The word ‘need’ doesn’t live here,” he replied—any fly shop, really.
You don’t need a specific fly, line, tippet, weight of rod—until you need it. I once lost a nice trout, too much for my fiberglass 4 wt and 7x tippet. I got my faster action graphite 5 wt and 5x. Caught the fish. Standing at a fly shop register, watching the total creep up, it’s tough to feel you need any of it until you do.
Before seeing my friend, I organized flies, leaders, spare spools.5 Loaded up the truck. It was possible we wouldn’t fish, just sail. That’s what happened. It was less about the specific variety of happiness, more about sharing it with a friend I hadn’t seen.
We got dinner at a spot he knows, accessible by dinghy. On the way, there was a Roseate Tern, Sterna dougallii. I love saying Roseate Tern. Roseate.
A Common Tern, Sterna hirundo, has a shorter tail than a Roseate. Least Terns, Sterna antillarum, are my favorite. Small—hence “Least.” Their bills are yellow.
Bills can be a good staring point for telling terns apart—though definitely not the end-all-be-all. It gets tricky with time of year and juvenile, immature, or nonbreeding birds. Generally, a Common Tern’s bill is orange with black at the tip.6 A Roseate’s “varies from entirely black to having orange at the base depending on time of year.”
Arctic Terns, Sterna paradisaea, have red bills, short like their legs. Despite the name, you have a shot of seeing these terns not in the Arctic—New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine. As for the short bill and legs, BirdNote explains since this species is found in the Arctic and Antarctica they have to be prepared for cold. “Because birds’ bills and legs are not covered by feathers, they lose heat. It just makes sense then for birds in cold climates to have short bills and legs—and less exposure to the cold.”
I’ve been writing about terns off-Substack so have spent more time than usual reading about them. It felt serendipitous to see a Roseate, a tern I don’t see as often as I see Common or Least. If I do, I erroneously write them off as Common Terns.
My friend identified a Great Blue Heron “See? I’m a birder.” We passed various gulls. As I pointed them out, he japed: “Friggin’ birders.”
In all the years we’ve fished it was the first time we’d been in a boat together—aside from my rowboat which, though I love it, doesn’t count. A great day. Shared happiness and a Roseate Tern.
It was also good because it lit a fire under my ass to fish. The gear is still in my truck. My beloved 9 wt, reels with good drag; my sling pack, pliers, stripping basket; a Brute tote with waders. I have no excuse.
Fishing makes me sad for reasons I’ve written about7 but won’t get into. I stopped—was prepared to never fly fish again. When this same friend recently asked why we hadn’t fished, I told him I don’t fish anymore. He kindly pushed back.
I saw another fly angler and asked if he’d been fishing. He said he hadn’t for a little bit—oddly reassuring. Fishing has ebbs and flows but there’s always something to catch. Told him I haven’t been fishing at all, that I planned to—hoped saying it out loud would push me to go.
My list of excuses conveniently obscures the fact I haven’t fished out of ego. It’s felt different for years, much worse, used to feel so good. It can’t feel good again unless I actually do it consistently. Fishing after not fishing this long isn’t going to be immediate happiness—something to do alone. Once it’s happiness again, I’ll share it.
The best way to have fishing return to happiness is to do it until it does. I wouldn’t say 2024 is my worst angling year; it hasn’t even qualified as an angling year.
Another perk of sharing happiness is when you lose regular touch with a form of it whoever you shared it with can encourage you to regain it.
This newsletter is about sharing happiness. I’m less curmudgeonly than I’d purport. When I see a bird, I write about it to share how happy it made me. When I see ferns or a butterfly, same thing. Ideally that happiness ripples out. I want whatever I put into the world to prove worthwhile or interesting to at least one person other than me.
Next time I publish something here, I’ll have fished. The fall run is coming, I have plans to see and fish with my friend in October. I’ll surely have a list of ways it doesn’t go as hoped—but I’ll have gone.
Standing at water’s edge, stripping line into my basket or double hauling, there will be birds. Terns, Osprey, gulls. Something else to make me happy.
Red foxes are solitary. When they aren’t alone a family of foxes is called a skulk—another cool collective name for animals. Parliament of owls, flamboyance of flamingos, unkindness of ravens, obstinacy of buffalo, confusion of wildebeest, descent of woodpeckers, skulk of foxes.
Also not relevant to everybody, but ferns are great.
My camera roll at any given time is bird photos I took and airdropped to myself and/or pictures of noteworthy scat. It’s taking much restraint not to include pictures of some stop-in-your-tracks coyote scat I saw, but interest readers might have in birds or ferns doesn’t necessarily translate to scat. It’s still poop.
An upside of sharing fervor: There’ve been plenty of birds or butterflies I’d have missed had I been alone.
My intermediate line gets 99% of the use for stripers, but I like to bring a floating or sinking line.
Common Terns have some subspecies. A Common Tern, longipennis, has a black bill.
Traumatic brain injury—diffuse axonal, fourth nerve palsy, bad fine motor, a still-numb right hand, atrophy, etc. Makes fly fishing feel less smooth and natural. If you’ve cast a fly rod, done well it feels smooth and natural. Coming on three years later the TBI still impacts life every day. It’s better, but TBIs don’t just go away. I’ve written in more detail about it: Common Black Hawk, others—the first thing I wrote after injury: Incapacity is Worse.
James, I am glad to hear you are going to go fishing. I can relate to not doing something because it isn't the same after a health issue changes how it feels. I wrote recently that I had been walking a lot more and I had to push myself out to do it. It's taken me a few years to get myself back out walking alone and enjoying it. I walked with friends and it was great but walking alone was not. I kept trying it and finally I found a level of happiness again, walking alone. It's not the same as it was, I can not walk as far as I used to, and I am not sure if I will ever be able to, but I am trying. Now my next hurdle is going back out birding alone. You've got this my friend!
Really interesting explanation for the "hell is other people quote," which, in my experience, has always been misattributed; this clears that up in a wonderful context👍🏻