Slipping out of the hotel room and into the quiet dark streets of rural Slovenia, I feel as though my heart might be set ablaze. The cool air immediately refreshes me, causing me to forget the beads of sweat resting on my temple. It is November 11, 2018, and I am traveling with two companions, who are bound to their beds from food poisoning. The sun has barely set, and everyone has retired to the hotel room. As I walk down the street, no direction in particular, I feel crushed by the sky. I look up and I see stars as dense as a mosaic. It feels like there is a blanket over the earth, and it makes me feel both claustrophobic and incredibly exhilarated at the same time. Mountains poke up from all corners of my vision, and I decide to scale one of them; and by this I mean to say that I walked 30 minutes up a hill, nothing to crazy. Nonetheless, it is enough to make me feel undeniably alive. I eventually find my way to a lake that lays in front of a cathedral that looks like a castle, which is only lacking Rapunzel. The lights from the cathedral cast sparkles onto the water, making it look like the starry sky. I feel like I am sandwiched in between two heavens. The bell tolls a time that I do not know, or care to know. Looking back at my journal, I wrote that this was the happiest day of my life. I still look back on that night and remember it as being the most elevated I have ever felt. I say that my feet felt as light as feathers, and that I have never felt so free. I wrote, "I am drunk on life. No one can touch me because I am the lake, I am the lights, I am the castle." This singularity with the world around me, and the sense of independence I felt venturing out into the night and throwing myself into the world - This is what I have based my level of happiness on in my life. But now I question, did I get it all wrong?
For quite some time, my life philosophy has been something along the lines of living as passionately as possible, diving into all emotions with full force, experiencing as many things as possible, seeking out challenges and adversity to strengthen myself, and all the while trying to have the least amount of negative impact on the world as I can. I see life as a one-and-done, not believing in any type of existence after death, so I want to experience all things; the pain, happiness, sadness, excitement, tranquility, and more. I like to test myself both physically and mentally, by climbing to peaks solo, and testing the resilience of my heart. By living this way, I have had some of the highest highs, and lowest lows. I revel in both of them, believing that they create a dynamic and complex life. I stand by this. However, I don't think that this directly correlates with happiness.
At the end of the book "Sapiens", author Yuval Noah Harari claims that scientifically, human life has absolutely no meaning, and any meaning that people ascribe to their lives is just a delusion. Some people can have personalized meaning, like to do good, or gain as much success as possible, but again that is personally put on them and not written in the stars. Our only purpose here is existence. Then again, you can think whatever you want, because at the end of the day, all we have is this life, so why not make it a happy one if there is no meaning beyond it. Perhaps our purpose is happiness, or perhaps we want to make that our purpose. The thing is, many humans, modern ones in particular, have immense difficulty with happiness; a word that seems so simplistic.
Modern ideals instilled in youth are somewhere along the lines of this, "Be free and independent, constantly travel the world and see new horizons, don't be afraid to let go and put yourself first, no looking back, follow your dreams, etc." These phrases all sound wonderful, and variations of them are made into stickers, wall art, instagram bios, and tattoos. Ideas such as these are worthy of paying attention to. However, many of these slogans support a kind of life comprised of many highs and lows; a life seeking short moments of intense adrenaline and dopamine rather than a stable calamity that can only be found outside of the influence of modern culture. Social media, advertising, music, fashion... so many elements of modern culture relate back to the pleasure-centric mindset. The travel industry claims that to be a diverse and interesting person, you must see every corner of the world, and oh - don't forget to document it by posting a picture and hash-tagging your location. The diet industry boasts that you need to try keto, paleo, then maybe do a juice cleanse, if you want to be healthy. The dialogue that is told to young people in this crazy modern culture of dating is that people are disposable, and no one talks about how real relationships take work and do not resemble movies. Magazines publish countless articles on how to get rich fast, or how to loose 10 pounds in a week. This is a reward driven, instant gratification, pleasure seeking world we live in. There is nothing wrong with pleasure, but a life of seeking extremes does not lead to consistent happiness, no matter what society tells us.
Buddhism is a religion centered around lessening one's suffering, and happiness is an added bonus of that. Buddhism claims that the eternal pursuit of blissful feelings is the cause of suffering. Chasing these feelings will only leave one feeling consistently lacking and that they never have enough. Buddhism instead offers a new approach; the middle ground. Never reaching too much for something, and never pushing things away either. Instead, radically accepting emotions and letting them flow through oneself like water rather than meeting them with resistance or chasing them. I quite like this approach, and I believe that it would help to end suffering. However, can I give up a life scattered with moments of intense bliss for a life of consistent pleasantness? Will I miss the highs?
A month or so ago I read a biography of Caroline Lockhart, a cattle rancher and writer who lived in the park I work at. In the beginning of the book I found myself heavily romanticizing her life, much as she romanticized the western way of living in her writings. Author John Clayton quotes Lockhart, "Each woman has, or has had, her own little romantic dream, which she hopes may come true, and the central figure in the romance is always a man to love and respect, to be proud of and rely upon, a man who brings with him contentment and happiness." She would not settle for anything less." (Clayton). It's true Lockhart did not settle, ever. She had fleeting affairs with many men, and died never having built a long-lasting life with someone. She lived the life she had always wrote about, as an independent woman of the west, living out her wildest dreams and going on countless adventures. Yet, at the end of her life she wrote in her journal, "To love and be loved is the only thing that makes life worth while, and life is getting so damned short." Throughout her journals she writes of crippling loneliness, a type that leaves one physically immobile. Did Lockhart live her life "wrong"? If given the chance, would she have done it all over again, maybe found stability instead of her pursuit of living a wild western life? We don't know, because skeletons cannot speak, and often we don't know these kind of answers until it is too late.
But who said happiness is the main goal? I thought there was no point to life? Your life goal can be whatever you want it to be, since there technically is no overarching one scientifically speaking. If one wants to live a life filled with bliss and torture, so be it. I am starting to think that there is not one correct answer. Perhaps the key to happiness, if that is your thing, lies somewhere in between the path of Buddhist steadiness and Lockhart extremes... However time and time again, when walking the line, one side pulls harder than the other, and usually it's the one that promises copious amounts of dopamine. We are only human, and we are not as strong as many of us think. We have the ability to open our awareness and better understand the way our brains work, but at the end of the day we are just a lump of flesh with a heck ton of hormones and neurons.
So, is all hope lost? Am I giving up on trying to obtain happiness? No and yes. Hope is not lost, and I am indeed giving up trying to obtain happiness. By grappling after happiness, it is ironically impossible to reach. If we reach for something, that means we are confirming in our minds that we don't already have it, and once we think we have it, we will inevitably want more. The trap is genius, and totally invisible in our minds, hidden somewhere deep in our psyche. The answer lies partially in the Buddhist ideas of acceptance and gratuity of what we currently have, something that is very difficult to maintain in modern society, a place where everything and everyone is telling us that we need more, more, more. I am still going to test myself at times and live a life of adventure, but I will not let it be fueled by the thought that I need to because my current life is lacking or that I am not doing enough to compete with the world of bliss-seekers. Happiness is not a competition, and by making it one, we will never gain it. Life is full of irony, is it not? By questioning what society tells us about how to live our lives, we are taking control over our own experience. I am trying to make my fleeting experience a happy one, and with every passing day I am learning how to better do that. I had a great time running around like a wild child in the streets of Slovenia... but am I using that as the standard to lifelong happiness? Not anymore.
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