Make Someone Happy
Jimmy Durante sings a song "Make Someone Happy", a featured song in the Tom Hanks starring Sleepless in Seattle. Now, the film and the song, at first pass, are about finding one's romantic love, finding the one person you can be in love with. After listening to the lyrics a few more times, I was struck by the maturity of the simple message contained in the song. While it may be oriented toward creating one ideal romantic love, it's message contains strong imperatives for behavior that assists in constructing eternal relationships with all those one interacts with.
Rather than understanding this as a song about romantic, true or monogamous love, what if we think about its message as a statement regarding unconditional love?
“Make someone happy” is an imperative to love your neighbor. “You will be happy, too” is the promise that serving others is the path to finding life's greatest joy. “Make just someone happy” uses the qualifier “just” to convey the point that service should focus on individuals, that serving one person is enough to bring happiness. This message is buoyed by the mention of fame, as a fickle contrast to love; she “comes and goes in a minute”. Making one person happy is opposite to the false goal of making lots of people happy which usually amounts to searching for fame.
Now, the reiteration of a single object of love (One heart the heart you sing to, One smile that cheers you, One face that lights when it nears) aligns these lyrics with traditional thinking about romantic love: that only one person can make you completely happy, a fullness of happiness evidenced by physical manifestations: you are cheered and your face is lit up. However, the lyrics construct this singularity not in counterpoint to dating multiple partners; rather, it is constructed against the foil of fame, or motivation in search of other's approval. Thus, rather than being a song primarily about romantic love, it is a song advocating for the construction of eternal relationships, which by definition are motivated out of a desire to selflessly build up another and to do it one person at a time. The song's lyrics have a much greater political and social weight than the standard romantic lyrics about losing patience, fulfilling desire, or making a show of affection.
From personal experience, the physical manifestations the song speaks of in regards to love are some of the happiest moments in a week: entering a room and having people face light when they see you; or, letting someone mean something enough to you that your face lights up when you see them. These are gifts that we can give to each other as loving individuals. We don't need to wait until we've found “the one”.
Rather than understanding this as a song about romantic, true or monogamous love, what if we think about its message as a statement regarding unconditional love?
“Make someone happy” is an imperative to love your neighbor. “You will be happy, too” is the promise that serving others is the path to finding life's greatest joy. “Make just someone happy” uses the qualifier “just” to convey the point that service should focus on individuals, that serving one person is enough to bring happiness. This message is buoyed by the mention of fame, as a fickle contrast to love; she “comes and goes in a minute”. Making one person happy is opposite to the false goal of making lots of people happy which usually amounts to searching for fame.
Now, the reiteration of a single object of love (One heart the heart you sing to, One smile that cheers you, One face that lights when it nears) aligns these lyrics with traditional thinking about romantic love: that only one person can make you completely happy, a fullness of happiness evidenced by physical manifestations: you are cheered and your face is lit up. However, the lyrics construct this singularity not in counterpoint to dating multiple partners; rather, it is constructed against the foil of fame, or motivation in search of other's approval. Thus, rather than being a song primarily about romantic love, it is a song advocating for the construction of eternal relationships, which by definition are motivated out of a desire to selflessly build up another and to do it one person at a time. The song's lyrics have a much greater political and social weight than the standard romantic lyrics about losing patience, fulfilling desire, or making a show of affection.
From personal experience, the physical manifestations the song speaks of in regards to love are some of the happiest moments in a week: entering a room and having people face light when they see you; or, letting someone mean something enough to you that your face lights up when you see them. These are gifts that we can give to each other as loving individuals. We don't need to wait until we've found “the one”.
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