On happiness.
I think it is entrenched in our culture that to be less than happy is somehow a failure. We are an immensely privileged society and whether by experience or intuition, we know that there is little need in many of our lives. Guilt, or maybe it’s shame, that we feel about this failure is what makes us perceive that a state less than bliss is wrong and to be avoided. But, I believe we must dip into the darker wells of emotion, perhaps even swim those brackish waters to not only appreciate, but I think, even to experience happiness. If we can eliminate our guilt or shame, our sense of failure, and simply appreciate our humanity and its breadth, we can experience times of sadness, frustration, anger, dissatisfaction and even enjoy them for the relativity they offer. I think we can just let them be, their cause and function sometimes undetermined, to do their work, as they are the response to or indications of change and that is a gorgeous thing in our lives.
You said that you tend to create prolonged periods of unhappiness in order to foment change in your life. Two things come to me. First, that it is prolonged in part because of the sense of failure and guilt associated with it and second, that to avoid some periods in your life that are colored this way would be to avoid change itself. So, the more resistant you are, the more you kick against this to try to return to an ultimate state of happiness, the longer and more difficult you make the shifting within you.
I am not advocating a dive into deep depression or relishing suicidal tendencies or some other extreme and dangerous aspect. I’m just getting a sense that we can appreciate, even love, our more tumultuous and varied emotional periods for their sheer human-ness, contemplating these things, not in terms of how to get away from them, but in a way that is more exploratory. Perhaps part of the problem is that we fear that if we do not resist, we will fall into an abyss, but I would argue that the more we resist, the stronger the message must become to get us to act, the harder we are pulled down. Perhaps this is a little like the crab that has an immune reaction that will kill it while it’s body attempts to eradicate a bacteria that has entered it’s system, but most of the time people do not have to become suicidal before they are able to make changes in their lives.
I’m rambling a bit. So, you are in a time of shifting and changing. It’s a beautiful thing. You need to look it straight in the eyes rather than turn your back and try to get away from it. “ The best way out is through”. If someone or something is driving you crazy, try to take a deep breath and then take full responsibility for your crabbiness, but let yourself be crabby. There is an exhilaration associated with all of this that is so wonderful. To feel your life’s momentum, to feel your ambitions and desires for the future moving inside you. It is about potential, possibility. It cannot come to fruition without friction. This is walking the knife-edge ridge of life. The valley is more comfortable, but if you can manage your discomfort, oh the views!
I’ve realized that, for me, this is what life is about. The pursuit of happiness is hollow as happiness is like any other emotion and is best left as a by-product of a productive life. To focus on it as a goal robs it of its power and really becomes something else entirely- a limited existence ruled by the fear of discomfort or pain. I’d rather experience the piercing extremes than rest in the warm, dull glow of contentedness. My therapist said my perspective seems very Buddhist, but I do not believe it is. I think Buddhism, like any religion, has many stunningly beautiful aspects, but I also believe that the goal of no attachment associated with Buddhism contributes to the malaise of the world (particularly when Westerners take it on, but that’s another subject) as one cannot desire change in the world and maintain no attachment simultaneously. I want to make conscious choices as best I can about what I am attached to, but one of them will certainly be that we humans alter the course we appear to be on. To say that I will live my life as a prayer is lovely and even functional in many ways, but best if it is accompanied by a seething ambition for a better world, in my opinion. Otherwise we are saying that all we can contribute is our own bliss. This just doesn’t seem to me to be enough in a world where too many inhabitants are not particularly comprehensive in their thinking about the planet.
Listening to “Truth and Beauty” again on the way home from Seattle (and you must listen to Anne Patchett read it to you) got me thinking about friendship. It is such a story of love and compassion between friends. I feel like people ebb and flow in my life all the time. I am often excited to see them come and sad to see them go. There is a sense of utility to these relationships for me. When they come to a close (either fading slowly or failing precipitously), I think they must have served their purpose, even if I can’t identify what it may have been. Very rarely, a person comes into my life that slips behind some transparent, yet tangible barrier to become a part of me, like family. That person is no longer in the tidal flow and instead there is a sense that losing them would cause my heart to break. I describe it this way because just the thought of it causes a visceral constriction in my chest. I think I give myself over to this very rarely because I know I cannot withstand that kind of loss too many times in my life. You have become one of those people for me. You have my unconditional love, like it or not.
I hope Asia is an unforgettable experience. I know you’ll love it and we’ll be waiting for you with bells on expecting to be the first for stories.
Love,
Andrea