Roll the dice and move ahead, then
celebrate your gains. Much more preferable than going backward. Where you land
is where you land, but then remember, you can move again… You’re not stuck on
one square.
Our attempts through life to maintain
the pinnacle of experience are met with regular disappointment, which,
curiously if tendered effectively can still turn into increased experience.
This is the good news inside of the bad news. Not just a silver lining, but
silver throughout. And yes, easy to talk about. Much harder in practice. Saying
easy. Doing, not so much.
Balancing the two must be some sort of
epidemic, with the ubiquitous life coaches all about us — probably three for
every taxi driver. Until the training wheels come off, though, you don’t find
out whether the balance is there or not. And sadly, life coaches don’t fit on
the seat or handle bars. We’re seven billion souls on seven billion solo rides,
taking time out along the way to share our spun stories over beverages and
crackers. I’ve just distilled our existence down to an in-between meal snack.
Help me Obi-wan, you’re my only hope solo.
Isn’t everything we do an effort to
make ourselves or others happy? That’s why we get up every morning, right?
Otherwise, what’s the point? You get up because you have to be productive, and
you have to be productive so that you can earn a living, and you have to earn a
living so you can pay for the necessities of life, and having the necessities
of life allows you to do more of the things you want to do, and doing the
things you want to do is what makes you happy, right?
What is this renegade phenomenon we’re
talking about? What is it we’re truly trying to attain? Can we do more than damage
control as we traverse the chasms of our lifelong expedition, meandering in and
out of self-absorbed relevance on our way to some perceived pie-in-the-sky
utopian dream sequence that didn’t make it off the cutting room floor? I sure
hope so, otherwise it’s going to be a very short and uneventful blog post.
BLACK AMPERSAND WHITE WORLD
One peculiarity of life (there are
839) is the thin separation between agony and ecstasy. Many people find they’re
at either one extreme or the other. When the pendulum swings, it often swings
all the way across. Not being in ecstasy — with the knowledge it’s attainable —
can be rather disconcerting, polarizing us into absolutes of attitude.
Losing something great can make one
totally despondent. If you almost reached your dream and then fell short, it
can prove devastating. It’s the silver medal syndrome. Second place is a
reminder that you came oh-so-close to winning, but still let it slip away. Do
we have to finish in first all the time, though, in order to be happy about
ourselves? Some Olympians are ecstatic to win gold, but are then in despair
with anything less. (You mean being one of the top three in the world isn’t
good enough for you?) Still others are grateful with a silver or bronze, and
it’s they who know who/what they’re really competing against.
Think of when people express the most
joy. It seems to quite often be when they’ve experienced relief — when some
kind of struggle has subsided. They tend to be happiest in the moments when the
pendulum is just swinging back from the other side, when they have something
freshly negative in their psyche with which to appreciate the positive more. We
use anchors in everything we do, and happiness is no exception to everything.
Missed ecstasy makes all else look worse by comparison. Relief from agony makes
all else look better by comparison. For one, health is best appreciated
directly after being unhealthy. Yin and yang operating in harmonic symbiosis. We
seek the yang and flee the yin, even though they work together. Aye, therein
lies the rub:
“Joy is what you feel when the
conflict is over. But it’s conflict that changes the person.”
—Robert McKee
People try to make their lives easy.
But maybe it’s better when we’re challenged. Challenges don’t have to be bad
things. Maybe we shouldn’t be trying to make it easier. Maybe life is supposed
to be hard, and if we’re fighting against that forward-thinking instinct, we’re
making it worse. Imagine a story without conflict. Imagine a game without effort.
Imagine a one-piece puzzle — it’s easy if you try. We wake from our slumber
when we push ourselves or have been pushed to places we wouldn’t normally dare
go.
Viktor Frankl argued that man’s
greatest pursuit isn’t for pleasure, but for meaning. And that pain could be a
path to experiencing a meaning beyond the false gratification of personal
comfort. That’s a rather profound concept in 27 words or less. Frankl has concisely
captured the essence of this topic. And we soldier on…
We are satisfying ourselves with our
comfort zones instead of with what would make us more fulfilled, more
emotionally developed, more experienced, wiser, more character-built, and
consequently with a greater amount of satisfaction. People will go so far as to
stay in awful, destructive situations because it’s familiar to them and they
have a sense of being in at least some control, whereas going out in uncharted
waters means to give up a lot of that control. A known pain can be more
appealing than any uncharted waters.
Donald Miller reveals: “Humans are
designed to seek comfort and order, and so if they have comfort and order, they
tend to plant themselves, even if their comfort isn’t all that comfortable. And
even if they secretly want for something better.” Strange characters, we are.
It doesn’t mean to go out of your way
the create difficulties for yourself, but to not go out of your way to avoid
them. They’ll be in rich supply, so we need not act the accomplice, as if
sabotaging ourselves were some sort of defense mechanism to attempt reverse
psychology on the fates.
As we know, sadness will inevitably be
part of every life. Though how much will we let that define us? It’s hard to
remind ourselves that happiness isn’t in ignoring sadness, but in putting the
sadness in perspective and prevailing over it. The problems will most surely
come, and they’re going to be compounded. We can each only hope that we will be
able to confront the sadnesses through the big picture, to not allow the tragic
aspect of life to drag us down and to overtake our entire emotional state. We
can be in a process of overcoming if we’re striving for it, so goes the axiom.
Aye, there be the rub again. Are we the cart or the horse?
FAUX HAPPINESS
Daniel Gilbert eloquently stated in
his seminal offering Stumbling on
Happiness that our idea of happiness is basically illusory. Our sense of
happiness tends to greatly rely on our memories, which are likewise unreliable.
Gilbert says “Our experience of the
world — how we see it, remember it, and imagine it — is a mixture of stark
reality and comforting illusion. We can’t spare either. If we were to
experience the world exactly as it is, we’d be too depressed to get out of bed
in the morning, but if we were to experience the world exactly as we want it to
be, we’d be too deluded to find our slippers. A healthy psychological immune
system strikes a balance that allows us to feel good enough to cope with our
situation but bad enough to do something about it.” All about a fine-tuned perception.
Fascinating stuff, this psychological makeup we’re dealing with.
So doesn’t it seem a little silly to
be overly concerned about where the calibration might be at in a given juncture?
The calibration is not reality, but only our perception of reality. Our
attitude won’t change reality, but it will change how we view it.
Incidentally, reading Gilbert’s salient
edition brings mass quantities of joyful endorphins just from the insight itself,
as he runs the gamut of happy topics.
In yon days, it was Thoreau who opined:
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is
confirmed desperation.” According to that sobering observation, we commonly tend
to pretend we’re happy when in reality we’re not. We portray something other
than what’s going on inside. And we don’t know how to change it. That’s enough
to make someone want to go live on their own out in the woods. But wait! If you
act now, Thoreau will also throw in a “There is no value in life except what
you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring
to it yourself” at no additional cost. Not only do you not have to order the
complete set of melancholy emotions, but you can build your set of positive
emotions from scratch, with no shipping.
It sounds like happiness is whatever
you make of it, and we can decide what we want it to be, without compromise but
with determination. That’s a nice revelation, maybe? No?
GLADNESS AMID GLOOM
At certain points, I began to conclude
that with all the distresses in life, the only people who were truly happy were
the masochists. At least they appreciate when things go wrong. You gotta give
‘em that. But surely everyone has their share of setbacks to take them off their
game and keep them from continually basking in the sunlight. How can we cope in
the midst of it all?
We are to somehow and in some way
embrace both the positive and negative in our lives. Utilize every opportunity
in what it provides. Remember that were there no mountains to climb, we’d get
awfully tired of walking around on a flat surface all the time. Ups and downs
go hand in hand. Funny how that works out. If the Rubik’s cube were already
solved, there’d be little point in having it, wouldn’t there?
Our life isn’t meant to be perfect or
without defect. Take it as it comes. An ideal can lose sight of the little
things that also matter. Yes, sometimes it really is aggrieving. We shouldn’t
just weather the storms, though, but face them and deal with them in some sort
of constructive manner, however possible. And… that’s where life’s manual leaves
off. From there, it just says something about “modify as needed, your mileage may
vary.” All right, so it would appear we’re given some freedom here to
improvise.
I gleaned some intriguing thoughts
from a HuffPost webcast, with the segment poignantly titled “The Negative Path
to Happiness”, piquing my interest. Some random thoughts that were bandied
about by the participants:
Are all the stresses of trying to be
happy making us unhappy?
We overvalue positivity and optimism
as the only elements of this thing called happiness. When we spend all our
efforts trying fill our minds happy thoughts and positive emotions, it often
has a counterproductive effect.
Embrace uncertainty. It’s more
fruitful to turn toward some of those things we tend to deny.
To just say you can never think a
negative thought, you’re avoiding problem solving. You often have to confront
the negativity, and if you’re focusing on the ultimate goal of happiness,
sometimes you can’t get there that easily.
Pursuing strictly happiness is silly.
Happiness is one of many emotions, and you’ll be riding the wave of them. You
can’t expect yourself to get happy by forcing yourself to be happy when you’re
really not.
Obsessive goal-setting causes people
to live completely five years ahead of where they are now. Of course, the
future never arrives. It’s always the present.
People in pursuit of happiness will
always be in pursuit of it. At some point, you have to start pursuing the
moment.
If you try to be happy all the time,
you’ll make yourself less happy.
Even moments of relative discomfort
can be positive moments.
It doesn’t make sense that everything
in your life you brought into your life with your thoughts, so you’re not
completely responsible for everything you experience. It sets people up to
blame themselves for things that are not their fault.
Wow, HuffPost for the win… All that
mediates is not psychoganda after all. If one digs enough, there are treasures
to be uncovered all around. My faith in humanity restored for the time being.
So maybe we’re not supposed to be
happy all the time. It was Veronica in Heathers
who furiously scrawled, “If you were happy every day of your life, you wouldn't
be a human being. You'd be a game show host.” Maybe accepting that will allow
us to return to happiness quicker, but also tolerate the unhappy better. And
maybe even occasionally thrive in it to whatever extent possible, as unpleasant
as it can be. Ongoing workouts at life’s gym paying dividends.
Footnote: If
you have to ask if you’re happy, you might be thinking too hard. If you don’t
have to ask, then you probably are. Unlearning is the path to learning. Things
Yoda would say for 400…
PROVERBIAL GLASS CONUNDRUM
A word about perception. OK, 489… We want
to laud those who claim the glass is half full, while decrying those who say
it’s half empty. On a superficial level, they’re fundamentally proper. Truth
is, both the optimistic and pessimistic answers are severely flawed and carry a
similar degree of inaccuracy. One is not superior to the other. Yet ultimately,
what do we find? We still reward the side that’s more enthusiastic about the
basic state of the glass. Interesting, is it not? But in the end, neutral optimism
or pessimism in analysis won’t alter the reality of the situation.
The realist measures the actual volume
and doesn’t concern him/herself with such middling details as what portion of
it is full. The size of the glass is likewise ancillary to how much water it
contains. 4 ounces of water in a 10 ounce glass is ostensibly the same as 4
ounces of water in a 6 ounce glass, for all strictly utilitarian purposes, as
far as the water is concerned. The amount of space in the glass taken up by air
isn’t very valuable information to this equation, nor does it have anything to
do with the state of the water, which is where the focus should be. An
efficient glass of water means nil. Some might say that it could be useful to
know how much available space there is left in the glass, but for what?
Hypotheticals? That’s not what’s at issue. What we’re determining is how much
water the glass currently has in it.
Furthermore, there really isn’t such a
morbid notion as “half full” anyway. Half filled,
maybe. But that’s something else entirely. Half full would be like saying half
of completely. The condition of being full does not come in degrees. It either
is or isn’t. Might as well say “fully half.” Mull on that one for a skosh.
Half empty is likewise a non-entity in
its own right. Half emptied, perhaps.
But again, that’s an altogether different connotation. Half empty is akin to
saying half of none. What? Excuse me? Judges? Hmm… let’s try that out, shall we? Zero, divided by 2 =
huh?
Just claim the glass has water in it
and cut your losses. Any more or less than this is speculation. Is there water
in the glass? Yes. OK, good. Are we going to psychoanalyze the water too?
What we find as the substance of the
half full/empty scenario is all form, modern psychobabble 101 in all its
glorious bombast. If this were Mythbusters, they’d say it’s blown up. Moral of
the story: Platitudes, while nice, can be pared down to metaphorical hype for
the sake of hype. Ask why the hype would be warranted, after stripping away the
propagandistic elements about what happiness is or isn’t. Ask what the assumptions
you’re making are, for no assumption has merit on its own accord. And in the
end, when merchants are parlaying glee, remember they’re attempting to sell
something that need not be bottled.
HAPPY GO LUCKY, SAD GO OTHERWISE
Mr. Roarke would implore the throngs,
“Smiles, everyone…” such wisdom amidst the simplicity of an innocent two-word
phrase, minus the Corinthian leather, which is also profound in its own way.
Meanwhile, Tattoo was feverishly incanting, “Da plane! Da plane!” And people
were going through lifetime transitions and entering other dimensions — it was
just one big Rastafarian party on the island. No wonder it was always booked
and the flight expenses were outlandish. They were selling the fantasy of
elusive happiness.
There’s a little song Bobby McFerrin
wrote, which we may want to sing note for note… To emphasize it even more, he
sequestered Robin Williams to do tribal incantations in the video, a smart move
in that Henry Kissinger wasn’t available. At any rate, no one else could bust a
move like that. Don’t worry…
Renowned human condition author extraordinaire
and psycholigical genius Malcolm Gladwell — an apropos name for the subject if
there ever were one — describes in his book “Blink” that researchers who study
facial expressions have identified over 3000 distinct ones matching certain
emotions, and that these expression-emotion pairings are consistent throughout diverse
cultures all over the world. Furthermore, our brain knows which ones we’re
using at a given time, because the expression itself can also lead to the
emotion. So even if you’re not happy, if you smile your brain will receive
messages telling it that you are happy. Pavlov would’ve been very proud, not to
mention his faithful tail-wagging accomplice. So it turns out to be a
self-affirming activity. And this is also why arch villains who wear masks or
painted faces with scowls on them have virtually no chance of being rehabilitated.
The signals they’re getting are that they are perennially disgruntled, and so
that’s how they will react, turning to a lifelong quest of arch villainry and
lucrative movie deals.
Not quite sure what Charlie Brown’s
brain would have told him, because he kind of had a wavy, half-smile, half
something else — more of a non-committal comic emotive state. And it’s no wonder he
didn’t learn anything in school, because none of his teachers knew how to talk
right. The Wa-Wa dialect to this day still has linguists perplexed.
That trifecta of happy/neutral/sad perspectives is
eloquently conveyed in the most emblematic Beverly Hillbillies factor. Kinfolk
said, “Jed, move away from there.” But economic status didn’t faze him. He was the middle
ground in the equation. In general, Jethro and Elly May were the paragon of
ebullience, while father Jed was neither happy nor sad, and Granny was an old
curmudgeon who took special pleasure in being upset at anything that moved.
You could take the same situation, and
Jethro and Elly May would be utterly tickled pink, Jed would be nonchalant, and Granny
would be in a veritable tizzy. The scenery always changed, but the demeanors didn’t. A
raccoon walks into the kitchen. Jethro and Elly May want to embrace it and feed
it tiny morsels. Jed reckons he wants to think the sit’iation over. Granny,
she’s already got a broom in her hand ready to wreak havoc.
If aliens came down from space and
invaded Earth, both Jethro and Elly May would be smiling ear to ear, and
wanting to ask them there space creatures all about themselves and share a cordial
interstellar moment. Jed, meanwhile, would be scratching his head not knowing
what to think, and Granny — she would be presently depositing shotgun in their
direction. It all depends on the attitude of the individual. Sit’iations are
just a backdrop we can use as excuses for the attitude we choose. The
sit’itations don’t change so much as our outlook toward them does.
SIMPLE THINGS IN LIFE
The logical and highly simplistic
explanation that most of modern humanity tends to follow off a cliff is that
more is better, and according to that we should be accumulating increased
amounts in order to derive greater satisfaction. Such is one of the great
illusions of life. Although if less is more, and more is less, then less becoming
more makes it less again. That didn’t get us anywhere outside of our
theoretical castle. More or less. (howmanyofme.com says there are 25 people in
the U.S. named Les Moore. I thought there would be more Les Moores, but there
are fewer Les Moores than I thought) Bottom line: we don’t deal well in
quantities, as math is a poor approximation of reality. About all math is good
for is keeping score in sporting events. Fractions? Decimals? 2-dimensional
objects? Pshaw… don’t exist.
Commercial trade indoctrination
insists that you always need an additional comparative amount above whatever
you have, and it needs to be newer too. Newer carries the overtone of improved,
but is it? Jerry Seinfeld wondered how many times can they make laundry
detergent better. Tide has been upgraded about 73 times in our lifetimes, and
each time we’ve been enraptured in the most recent development. Wow, we thought
it was good before, but now it’s really,
really good. Now they have flavor crystals! Sure, it’s absurd, but as a
group we’re like gullible’s travels. We never figure out that the latest diet, exercise
machine, money-making opportunity, calamity, etc., is just a rehash, and there
will be many more clones to follow.
Gilbert said about materialism:
“Economies thrive when individuals strive, but because individuals will only
strive for their own happiness, it is essential that they mistakenly believe
that producing and consuming are routes to personal well-being.” The group machine
driving the individuals. Hey, who’s in charge here?
A possible intriguing follow-up to
this concept later on is the process for training oneself to appreciate to a
greater extent what is already there, while still balancing that with proper
ambition to stretch farther in more substantive ways. If we could develop true
discipline, I believe we each have the capacity within us to derive even higher
satisfaction than we are experiencing without the need to accumulate or attach
it to possessions.
Somewhere along the way when man
started to become overly civilized, he began being programmed that money and
personal property played a big role in one’s quality of life, and thus the greater
quantity, the better. There being nothing inherently wrong with the
accumulation of wealth, such pursuits tend to dominate our time and energies,
always looking for the sale, always looking for the good deal, always trying to
pad one’s portfolio, a never-ending ponderous scrutiny of the monthly budget,
penny-pinching like your life depended on it. As if the money ruled you. The
paragon of wealth? Value, sure. Ultimate value, nah. Take regular breaks from
your life to detach yourself from your money by not lending ultimate credence
to it. Make your money take out a loan on you for a change.
Miller added: “There is an intrinsic
feeling in nearly every person that your life could be perfect if you only had
such-and-such a car or such-and-such a spouse or such-and-such a job. We
believe we will be made whole by our accomplishments, our possessions, or our
social status.”
And even when we have resigned
ourselves that material things don’t bring us satisfaction, we still seem to look
for temporary substitutes in place of the real thing. We seek escapes. And then
we find that many of those escapes don’t have an escape themselves. In
attempting to discover transitory refuge, we have created for ourselves a well-fortified
cage at the human zoo.
Consider for a moment: What monetary
amount would it require to have you agree to part with one of your limbs? Or
lose your sight? Or give up your cherished relationships? Or lose fond
memories? Or take a year off your lifespan? Or sacrifice the experience of
music? Or on and on? What value can be placed on such things? Is it more than a
million? More than a billion? Trillion? A little absurd to consider, isn’t it? So
if you already have things that surpass the value of mere wealth, why aren’t
you appreciating those things as much as you think you would appreciate this untold
wealth?
Ah, but you want to have your cake and
eat it too. The amount we want is always just “a little bit more” than what we
have. It’s a bottomless well that never gets filled. We’re in constant search
for that value-driven Holy Grail, all the while ignoring the worth of what’s in
front of us.
You
can chase the far horizon
Tryin’ to be someone you're not
Or spend your whole life searching, yeah
For what you've already got
It’s funny how the road can lead
Back to all the ones you need
(“You Never
Know Who Your Friends Are” —Hooters)
We have to unlearn the mistaken notions
we’ve been conditioned to, which is that joy is somehow attached to continually
upping the ante. Perhaps instead we could be "lowering the anti-" to
produce an even better effect. Somewhere the notion of diminishing returns
didn't get factored in by a populace in too much of an energized rush to
notice. Conversely, he that first loses his life shall find it... anyone?
OUR EPITAPH
The poets
had it right. While we’re busy pursuing our ever-elusive happy trails, it would
be more direct to simply pursue love, which is what happiness relies on anyway.
Avoid the middle man. Love of yourself. Love of those you’re close to. Love of
your Creator. Love of life. There, was that so hard??
Being alive
and having connections with others is what we have to be most grateful for and
happy about, while everything else is gravy. Sure, the gravy can be nice too,
but it’s curious how much attention we want to give the gravy, while it’s only
what accentuates. As if we took life and love as givens.
Likewise,
it’s not so much what we have in comparison to what other people do or don’t
have. Picture if you were the only person on Earth. How then would you gauge
your state of happiness? Does someone else’s misfortune raise your fortune at
all? We’re to be as happy as we are for having basic life and knowing others,
irrespective of what our contemporaries are experiencing. Their sadness should
not be artificially raising our happiness quotient, nor should their increased
happiness lower our happiness. Without catching ourselves, we think in a
quantitative currency mindset, forgetting that the things most important are
not zero-sum.
Bards, sages
and the wise echo the same sentiment: A conquering enterprise is what we’re involved
in. Happiness, then, is the very process of overcoming sorrow, but not avoiding
it. Accomplishing all of this menagerie together. From dimness to light… without detours.
(click the Play arrow)
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