In the Mix of Happiness and Not Happiness

 (I meant to put this as a comment after Dan's last entry, but it was too long. :-)

Wow, Dan, what a great story from so many angles. You really brought something out here.

To me, Jane is symbolizing that part of us that would like simply to reduce everything to its utter absolute nature, of either totally good or totally bad, right or wrong, brilliant or shitty. Something about our more basic thinking/reacting, maybe due to fight or flight reactions which must make decisions very quickly to avoid harm. But this tendency to overgeneralize a complex field, can very much have people thinking that for example the Bible is the word of God, and Muslims are all terrorists, and the American flag is a symbol of absolute good in the world, and I really hate my step sister, and black people are only 2/3 human, and as Jane was wont to affirm, life is totally shitty, etc etc.

It feels good to be absolutely certain in one's assessment of a thing. Certainty feels empowering. Meanwhile, the more accurate truth may be that rarely are things very certain.

For example, yesterday, after work, I decided to take our dog, Milo, for a walk in the woods. He'd been cooped up all day, and I feel for his frustration. Now, granted, I'm not much of an alpha leader for dogs. So they tend to sense they can get away with doing their own thing without having to give in to my power over them. I'm kind of happy about this and yet not always happy with the outcomes. I didn't choose to have this dog be a part of our lives. Kim and Rosie did. But I often feel Milo's urge to get out of the confines of the house, and partly I like to oblige him.

So, during this walk, I've got a big trash bag and gloves and a litter picker-upper, and Milo's trotting along in front of me sniffing around and so forth. Even our cat, Cora, is following along, which she only occasionally does. And we're getting pretty far out in the woods, and I'm in basic overall happiness mode, listening to a podcast about the kindness of strangers, and then I can't find Milo. I'd noticed a group playing paintball some distance off. So I leave my trash gear and walk toward them, and sure enough, Milo was making new friends.

What I noticed, in terms of pursuit of happiness, is what a mix it can be between that which is felt to be happiness-inducing and that which feels not-happiness-inducing. We can abbreviate to H.I. And N.H.I. So taking the walk was H.I. with a bit of not N.H.I of feeling somewhat obliged to relieve Milo of his cabin fever, which wasn't really my responsibility, but I felt bad for him feeling bad. Picking up trash is also some combination of pro and con H.I. as really it's not my trash in the first place, and I'd prefer people took care of their own trash. But there it is, and I feel good about helping to keep the forest looking nice and trash free. Then finding Milo had run away was N.H.I, though when I did find him making new friends, that was H.I. and fun for me to meet new people and see how much they liked Milo and see how happy Milo was to be among this new stimulation. But then trying to keep him with me as we were leaving this group was mostly N.H.I. because I could tell he was still in independent spirit mode, and not really caring much to respect my wishes that he stay with me. And sure enough he wandered off again while I was wanting to finish up my trash collecting and get back home, which of themselves were H.I. for the most part, though I was getting my fill of those pursuits so beginning to feel somewhat more to the side of N.H.I. Then I had to go back and find Milo again which was more N.H.I. And I went into that scoldy emotional state toward Milo, at what a bad boy he was being, which of course was only from my point of view, wishing he'd keep to my bidding. But then I notice how much I like my freedom from having to oblige myself to others, how there are definitely parts of me that find the pursuit of happiness in going my own way and leaving others out of communication with me when I'm enjoying going off on my own unaccounted for.

So, what I'm seeing is that going through life triggers a kind of alternating current between the things that add happiness vs the things that subtract it, and this can happen within the same thing so that we're among a kind of variable register of how much everything's inducing happiness even while partly it may be inducing unhappiness. It's all a mix of qualities rarely totally one way or the other, but a sort of linear on/off switch of gathering yes's and no's that do add up being either mostly happiness inducing or mostly not happiness inducing, were we to give an overall assessment, even while some of both happiness and not happiness are sprinkled among all experiences. "Woven in" as we've said.

And I think as Dan points out, as we get better at staying open for the good stuff, the less we are shut down by that part of us that wants to paint the whole thing black or white. Black is really almost always too black and white is often too white. Too much pessimism misses whatever joy may actually be there, and too much optimism is at risk of being sorely disappointed eventually at expecting too much of a thing that really can't deliver the good as much as you might like.

We're really always among a mix of qualities, and happiness can suddenly jump out of situations that could seem convincingly horrible through and through. So congratulations and thanks to Dan for seeing further into the complexity and staying open, even beyond very challenging suggestions to the contrary, to close off, shut down, and join Jane in this overgeneralized assessment that life IS shitty! and look at all her evidence to prove it.

For me, then, "faith", as Dan pointed out, is the willingness to stay open for happiness to show up even in the places you might be completely convinced there is no happiness to be found. And of course, I'm quite imperfect at this, though at times, I do manage to see through some of my own limitations at this.

You might have heard the story of the Buddhist Monk is running away from a tiger, then falls over a cliff, is hanging from a branch about to drop to his death, and look, he spies a fresh ripe wild strawberry! He plucks it, pops it in his mouth, savors it. Ah, happiness for that moment, quite aside from his probably demise.

--Steve