Misery

"Most people would rather be certain they're miserable, than risk being happy." -- Robert Anthony.

I believe there is a rather large kernel of truth in this quote. I know in my own case, in the past I have let myself get bogged down in the misery at times, rather than grasp at the possibility of a happiness that may or may not have been just beyond my reach. Sometimes going so far as to doubt a happiness that is right before me offering things that I knew without doubt I craved in the deepest parts of my being. I don't believe that I am unique in this, which brings me to the inevitable question of why. Why do many of us do this to ourselves? Why do we occasionally work against our own interests? And what does it take to release ourselves from this self-imposed misery? As with so many of these issues, I believe a great deal of it can be boiled down to fear and external expectations.

How do we come to the point of embracing our miseries? I seriously doubt it is a conscious act for most of us. Perhaps it is cumulative. We have innumerable small nips and bites take away small but essential pieces of our happiness over a long period of time, until all we notice is the pain and forget the happiness or potential for happiness that once inhabited the places now filled with pain and loss.

Perhaps it comes with an awareness that risk can equally lead to much worse misery as easily as to happiness, and the fear of that outcome deters us from reaching for the potential happiness that also could come about. Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.

Also, there is the risk of possible censure of family, friends or society because the happiness that calls to us falls outside acceptable norms and expectations. Perhaps our true happiness lies in running away and joining a circus. Without a doubt, others would warn against pursuing pipe dreams and not being mature or responsible. Conformity or fear of criticism frequently suppress the true desires of our hearts, sometimes to the point of killing them completely. In time, we become a self-policing organism that will not allow itself to acknowledge that the stars exist, much less reach out for them. Once this self-policing is firmly in place, we frequently don't recognize gifts of happiness that appear before us wrapped up in pretty paper and a bow. And, if we do notice it, we may be suspicious that the contents can truly be what it appears to be, thus perpetuating the all to familiar misery. In holding tight to the familiar misery, we seemingly hope to block out even deeper misery. But, of course, there is no guarantee of that either.

How do we shake off the shackles of long standing conformity, misery, pain, that restrain our hand's reaching for the possibility of finding our true bliss? I suspect it requires a conscious focusing on how we can move deliberately toward joy and release our hold on the constant niggling pains that we've allowed ourselves to claim as our own. Not an easy task, certainly. It is terribly easy to lapse back into familiar patterns. Too easy to substitute acceptance for happiness. To cling to stability rather than risk change for the sake of happiness and fulfillment. To exchange a proper public image for all out goofy joy.

As I was examining some of these questions with a friend, discussing the potential for a great happiness that had suddenly appeared in my life, she offered very wise words. "Accept it and say 'thank you'." And so I did. And so I shall. It is the only truly rational response.

"Say yes quickly, if you know, if you've known it from before the beginning of the universe." -- Rumi.

Surrender

"All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling." -- Blaise Pascal.

I've been mulling this quote over for awhile and still am not 100% certain what I think about it. But I believe there is something true lying beneath the surface.

When I was younger, and to a much lesser extent now, I did most of my living in my head. I could think or logic my way out of most negative or inconvenient feelings, suppressing them until I thought they were gone. Of course, I was just lying to myself in a fairly elaborate way. I don't believe that I was terribly unique in that approach, but perhaps I turned it into more of an all-encompassing thing than most folks do. And, in the end, the feelings escaped anyway.

I wonder why I thought that was an acceptable approach to life. Was it fear? That may have been part of it. In the case of my long, too long marriage, I forced myself to accept emotional sterility because I didn't want my children to grow up poor due to their parents being divorced. That was a personal demon carried forward from my own childhood. So, perhaps, it was understandable albeit unacceptable. And, frequently, rejection at the hands of others led me to hide my feelings and desires, believing that there must be something lacking in me or wrong with my feelings. It never occurred to me that the source could be anything other than something missing in me.

I don't think that fear would account for every instance where reasoning is given higher status that feeling. Modern humans have elevated reasoning and logic to a dizzying height at the expense of feelings and intuition. Even the antonyms to the words "logical" and "rational" have strongly negative overtones. They aren't just opposites, they are wrong and unacceptable. It is as if by denying inconvenient feelings we can pat ourselves on the back for being logical or rational, no matter how desolate the lack of responding to our feelings may make us feel within ourselves. I have been guilty of this for large amounts of my life.

I propose that the two ends of the spectrum should be more balanced in our lives. It's not that reasoning is a bad thing. It is vital in many parts of life. But when it shuts out feelings I believe we owe it to ourselves to examine it more closely to determine if that is the best approach to a situation.

I read a book once called The Gift of Fear by Gavin De Becker. The author asserted that if you felt fear, you shouldn't try to talk yourself out of it because, on some deep level, you had perceived a reason for that feeling. It was telling you something important about a situation and that you needed to act on that rather than dismiss it as irrational. I have come to suspect that this reasoning may be applicable to other feelings as well. We have all had the experience of immediately distrusting someone we have just met. There was no data to support this impression, but the feeling was there nonetheless. If we ignore it or talk ourselves out of the feeling, we will most likely pay for any misplaced trust.

I believe that this also applies to positive feelings as well. I think it likely that everyone has met people who they liked on first sight and went on to become fast friends with the person. Just as the fear puts us on our guard, this attraction tells us that there is something good to be experienced if we only let it.

I'm still not 100% certain what I should do with these ideas. I certainly don't want to let it devolve into a solely logical exercise. I suspect the best path for me is to make it my habit to check in with both my brain and my gut on a regular basis, see which one best addresses a situation and trust in the wisdom of either my reasoning or my feelings. At the very least it will lead me to be ever more in touch with what I truly want and need in my life, and, hopefully, to a balanced approach to life as a whole.

Relativity

My first encounter with ethical relativism came rather early in life in, of all places, Sunday school. There we were, all of 11 or 12 years of age, discussing good and evil, being very sure that we knew the difference. One of us, and I hope it wasn't me, piped up with the proclamation that we would never steal. Our teacher responded that we should never say there was anything we would never do because we could not know that. She then said that she was absolutely certain that she would steal if it was the only way to feed her children. That certainly gave us pause. I don't know that any of us were less certain of our own correct behavior at that point, but, for me at least, it did make me a bit less judgmental of other people's behavior.

As I got older and saw more of life, I came to the realization that there are very few black and white, good and evil distinctions in this world and that all we can do is decide where on the gray scale to be in any situation. And sometimes that choice will be something that others will neither understand nor approve of. This all came back to me recently when I found myself in a dispute with a young person whose world is very much black and white. There could be no meeting of the minds because, in his view, both of us could not be right and so he had to fight tooth and nail to assert his own correctness. So, while releasing him to his own opinions, I found myself revisiting the issue of right and wrong and what it means in my life.

What is black? Genocide, rape, child abuse, wholesale destruction for profit, all seem to fall into that category for me. But other seemingly black ethical concerns can be slid to the dark gray end of the scale depending on circumstances. For example, ending another human life is an ill that becomes less black in certain cases and even our laws and society acknowledge this fact. A cold blooded murder is not the same thing as killing in self-defense and we all admit as much.

What is white? Love, care for the innocent, peace making, altruistic giving seem to be good in and of themselves. However, these things, no less than their blacker counter parts, can slip into the pale to mid-level gray areas. If unselfish care for another leads to a total abnegation of one's own needs and bitterness ensues, there is no beauty in those acts.

The grays predominate in every life and vary depending on an individual's time, history and circumstances. We like to think ourselves better than that but we might just be perpetuating a comfortable fiction which insulates us from ourselves. My Sunday school teacher was right and I no longer believe that there are things I absolutely would not do, although I sincerely hope that there are some. As much as it shakes my non-violent beliefs, I am certain that there are even some cases in which I would resort to physical violence, all the while hoping that I never have to find that out.

What is to be done with this relativistic life? What does it mean to make moral or ethical choices in such an atmosphere? It seems to require much more of us in the way of self-reflection and in identifying what guiding star we wish to follow. In holding that before us, always ready to adjust our course, perhaps we can steer more truly through whatever waters we may find ourselves in. It requires our constant attention and examination in order to avoid drifting into unwanted channels or crashing on the rocks. And, if at the end of the day, we can honestly say we did our best with what was before us, we can hardly wish for more.