Feel something. Feel everything.

The whole point here is to feel something. From the lowest lows to the highest highs. By taking something that keeps you from feeling these things, you rob yourself of that which makes you live. Feelings, physical and emotional. There’s a certain dishonesty that comes from the compulsion to avoid pain. We surround ourselves with things to buffer us from potential suffering.

There are a few things I object to about the Buddhist religion, and one of those things is the avoidance of pain. Buddhism teaches us to avoid attachments for they inevitably lead one to experience suffering.

Suffering gives birth to wisdom. There's no other way to know the fullness of life without suffering. We would not be able to appreciate The Good, if we have haven’t known the alternative. To not know suffering causes us to take The Good for granted. And that is death. It is void. It is the absence of love.

Nothing comes from nothing. Feelings are always the consequence of something. They can be the result of success or failure, acknowledgement or neglect. The feelings always succeed something, some kind of event. Suffering is usually the consequence of neglect of some kind. One might neglect her body, and as a result of this period of neglect, she suffers from illness. A parent might neglect a child, and eventually both will suffer from loneliness for the other. One might neglect his dreams, his innermost desires, and eventually suffer from loneliness for himself, from the loss of himself.

Feelings serve as an alert. As an alert it urges us to self-knowledge, to seek out the sources of these feelings. In tracing our feelings back to the source, we are lead on a path that winds its way through the world within, showing us the caves and the vistas. It is a process of love, for the greater the self-knowledge the greater the love. The more one knows himself the more he knows about the outside world as well. The more one knows himself, the greater his ability to empathize. We are all made up of the same stuff, after all.

The Desperate Quest for Joy

There’s a phrase I’ve coined and use half-jokingly with my partner: “the desperate quest for joy.” And, every now and then, we will note when something strikes us as a “desperate quest for joy.” One example of this is the Thanksgiving-themed toilet cover (with matching hand towels). Any over-the-top or superfluous holiday decorations obviously qualify as desperate-quests-for-joy. You don’t have to show us how much fun you should be having, just have it.

I think of this this morning because I read a Facebook status of one of my friends from high school. In high school I had imagined what a great artistic force she would become, how she’d take the world by storm. I had admired her free poetic spirit, and somewhat envied it in her. Years later, after no contact, we find each other on Facebook and I was dismayed to learn that she really hadn’t been doing anything particularly poetically-adventurous. She worked in her dad’s office for most the years after college and is now a mother of two while she teaches ‘baby yoga’ (I haven’t the slightest notion of what that looks like) part-time. In school, she stood out in my mind as one who was extraordinary, one who wasn’t afraid to think and behave differently from others, and how she did it was simply… beautiful.

It is beautiful to find love, marry, become a mother – yes.

Nearly everyday, she’s updates her FB status, something to the quasi-poetic effect of: Dirty dishes in the sink. Lovely babies smelling like green grass and the Earth. My husband is my hero. I love my life! Or: A sleepy end to a wonderful day. Beautiful baby crying won’t let me rest. I love my life! Or: I love my home. I love my SUV. I love that my husband’s business is strong. I love my life!

Do you hear it, everybody? She loves her life. In case you ever had any doubt as to whether she enjoys her life, then you may now put it aside. Life affirmation is a healthy thing to do. It keeps us from taking our blessings for granted. But it comes to the point when it seems like we spend more time making these ‘affirmations’ than living them. It makes me wonder, then if, when we do this, we are not in the moment of enjoying these blessings. Instead, we’re busy showing others how we’re enjoying the blessings, busy constructing the pretense of enjoyment.

I think we could say the same for excessive social drinking. Or excessive holiday-taking. Or excessive toy-consuming.

This is not a criticism, show much as an alert. It’s likely that behind this pretense of enjoyment is a soul who is lonely and suffering. Behind this pretense of enjoyment is an identity un-realized and unacknowledged. This person is MORE, much more, than the sum of their symbols of joy. On some level, this person knows it and is trying to forget. Maybe we haven’t shown enough interest.