Having It All,
but Feeling Deprived

In this world, those showered with blessings can be just as unhappy as those deprived of them. Unfortunately, however, there are very few who can grasp this reality.

Charlie Chaplin, who used to play the part of a comic actor in films, was one of America’s first film-star millionaires, earning vast amounts of money during his 52-year film career. Born in London in 1889, he worked in films in America, ultimately making his home in a villa on a 37-acre estate overlooking Lake Geneva in Switzerland. When he died in 1977, aged 88, he was worth £10 million. After early successes, he was showered with laurels, including a knighthood in 1975. Then, in 1972, he returned to Hollywood triumphantly to receive a unique Oscar for “the incalculable effect he had had in making motion pictures the art form of this century.”

There is no part of the globe where he has not been appreciated, and his 80 films are still being shown continuously. Even his first comedies of the 1914-17 period are still exhibited commercially, not as museum pieces, but as modern entertainment—the only motion pictures of that period still to be so exhibited. It is estimated that 300 million people have seen each Chaplin comedy.

He had “brought more joy and laughter to more people than anyone who ever lived.” However, in his old age, he stopped smiling, for as his age increased, so did his infirmities. His sight, speech and hearing began to fall. He started using a wheelchair. While the Chaplin of the screen continued to be an object of entertainment to cinema audiences, the real Chaplin lay in bed, unable to work any longer. He died a few hours before his family’s traditional Christmas celebration began.

One of Chaplin’s biographers, Dennis Gifford wrote, ‘‘While he was working, he created something more than mere films; he created life as he wanted it to be. Life with laughter and love, dreams, and hope, but where there was always a happy ending if nothing more than a walk down the road to tomorrow.” (Reader’s Digest, Jun 1978)

Another commentator, writing after Chaplin’s death, said, “Chaplin’s life has been filled with what most lives consist of yearning after... wealth and fame and creative play and beautiful women... but he does not know how to enjoy any of the four.” (Max Eastman in Ladies Home Journal)

It was certainly true of his most intimate relationships; he married four times but was perhaps only happy in his last marriage. However, although extremely rich, he was still dogged by the fear that he might once again become as desperately poor as he had been in his childhood.

The story of Charlie Chaplin is the story of all men, in the sense that happiness eludes them whether, like Charlie, they have everything but cannot enjoy it or whether they are so lacking in resources that a sense of deprivation mars their entire existence. In this world, those showered with blessings can be just as unhappy as those deprived of them. Unfortunately, however, there are very few who can grasp this reality.

The futility of endlessly pursuing happiness is illustrated by the suicide note of a young American woman: “I wanted to find happiness, and so I took to intoxicants. I even went to the extent of having free sex. However, I did not find happiness anywhere. So now, frustrated, I end my life.”

Many liberated men and women stop at nothing in the quest for happiness. However, they finally learn that happiness is not attainable in the way they have chosen to seek it. After leading lives of utter frustration, many feel driven to commit suicide in sheer desperation.

How ignorant are they who lay claim to knowledge! What failures are they who top the lists of the world’s most successful men!