joyful, playful and optimistic

"Lori and Reba Schappell may be twins, but they are very different people. Reba is a somewhat shy teetotaler who has recorder an award-winning album of country music. Lori, who is outgoing, wisecracking anda rather fond of strawberry daiquiris, works in a hospital anda wants someday to marry and have children. They occasionally argue, as sisters do, but most of the time they get on well, complimenting each other, teasing each other and finishing each other's sentences. In fact, there are just two unusual things about Lori and Reba. The first is that they share a blood supply, part of a skull, and some brain tissue, having been joined at the forehead since birth. One side of Lori's forehead is attached to one side of Reba's, and they have spend every moment of their lives locked together, face-to-face. The second unusual thing about Lori and Reba is that they are happy - not merely resigned or contented, but joyful, playful and optimistic. Their unusual life presents many challenges, of course, but as they often not who doesn't? When asked about the possibility of undergoing surgical separation Reba speaks for both of them: 'Our point of view is no, straight out no. Why would you want to do that? For all the money in China, why? You'd be ruining two lives in the process'.

So here's the question: if this were your life rather than theirs, how would you feel? If you said, 'Joyful, playful and optimistic,' then you are not playing the game and I am going to give you another chance. Try to be honest instead of correct. The honest answer is 'Despodent, desperate and depressed'. Indeed, it seems clear that no right-minded person could really be happy under such circunstances, which is why the conventional medical wisdom has it that conjoined twins should be separated at birth, even at the risk of killing one or both. (...) And yet, standing against the backdrop of our certainty about these matters are the twins themselves. When we ask Lori and Reba how they feel about  the situation, they tell us that they  wouldn't have it any other way. In an exhaustive search of the medical literature, [a proeminent] medical historian found 'the desire to remain together to be so widespread among communicating conjoined twins as to be practically universal'. Something is terribly wrong here. But what?

There seem to be just to possibilities. Someone - either Lori and reba, or everyone else in the world - is making a dreadful mistake when they talk about hapiness. Because we are the everyone else in question, it is only natural that we should be attracted to the former conclusion, dismissing the twins' claim to hapiness with offhand rejoinders such as 'Oh, they're just sayoing that' or 'They may think they're happy, but they're not' or the even popular 'They don't know what hapiness really is' (ussually spoken as if we do).

( Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Hapiness, Harper Perennial, 2006, pp.29-30. Há tradução portuguesa)

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