Fairways to Happiness
What is happiness? What does it mean in relation to everyday life, why do we search for it and how can we find it? Director Doug Morrione has decided to search for them in the first place you’d expect … a golf course.
No it’s not a facile sports story or advertisement for a good walk ruined (though it is an ad for other things), so much as more complete metaphor for this particular part of the human experience than you might think. The golf course in question is country club in Dubai where ex-patriate Eugene Kerrigan challenges himself to score lower than 80 in a day’s shooting – the line between an amateur and a professional player. Why? Because it gives him something to strive towards and challenge himself with and in the process define his days and or provide a sense of accomplishment even if success can’t offer any tangible gain to the quality of his life. It is simultaneously immaterial and one of the most important ways he could spend his time.
Like most of the other subjects of Morrione’s documentary Kerrigan is one of the immigrant inhabitants who make up some 85% of Dubai’s population, brought in to build the nation’s infrastructure and businesses, provide services to the increasing influx of individuals doing that work or simply looking for the opportunity to build a new life. And in many cases being a spouse of someone doing that, coming along for the ride and trying to figure out ‘what to do now?’
Some of them start new hobbies, some of them do nothing but watch the grass grow, many start new businesses and in the process make sure everyone knows how easy that is in Dubai in pieces of the films occasional proselytizing. In between the semi-professional promotion there is more insightful introspection into why these individuals are doing what they are doing and what are they looking for? ‘How is happiness defined’ turns out to be as tricky a question as ‘how do we achieve it,’ which helps explain why so few people feel as if they have done so. Much of it involves passing on to the next generation, ensuring children are happy and unburdened for as long as possible while also preparing them to live their lives. Or it’s about practicing some level of mindfulness, being present in the moment you are in and not worrying over much about the future. Or it’s about hitting par for most of the course.
All of it is reducing anxiety and stress as the most direct pathway to happiness, which certainly calls into question choices about the golf.
Morrione delves into a wide cross-section of immigrants and individuals, from doctors and professionals to a young woman from Bangladesh who directly compares the privation of her youth to opportunity of Dubai where she can actually focus on school because basic needs have been met. For her happiness is nothing more complex than absence of want for the bare necessities. It’s all a matter of perspective. In the process we are introduced to a wider and more complex world within Dubai than many may be aware of all in search of the same goals in life and each unsure how to get it.
There’s more than a little advertising to wade through but as ambiguous as it can be there is truth to take from it. The fact that no one can quite put their finger on what they need for happiness isn’t a gap or a bug. It’s the whole thing.