I was raised in a family whose
guiding myths included themes of competitiveness, athleticism, hard work, and
academics. In 1969, I was introduced to sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I quit
basketball, let my hair grow long, and bought the requisite jeans and work
shirts of the counter culture. After about a year and a half, my mother who was
quite worried by my behavioral and stylistic changes, asked me during one of my
holiday visits, “Bradley, are you happy?” I took her question seriously as I
took all matters seriously during that era and found it hard to answer. In a
way, the question became a Zen koan for me. I discovered as I contemplated it, that
I did not measure my life in terms of a happiness quotient. I was living
through the highest highs and the lowest lows. The revelation for me at this
time was that the proper question would have been, “Is your life meaningful?” I
found that if I circled my life in terms of happiness and sadness, then
satisfaction and dissatisfaction bounced through me daily like a rubber ball.
Whereas, when my life was framed more inclusively in terms of meaningfulness,
there arose greater acceptance and contentment.
People often desire to be happy and I always get
a little uneasy when I hear people wanting happiness because it’s a surefire
way not to get it.
As some of you know, I am an
astrologer. I mention this because from the point of view of astrology, we
Americans have a Sagittarian outlook on the world. What this means is that our
perspective on matters is imbued with the ideas of expansion, of the wide open
spaces, of westward ho, of “give me land, lots of land under starry skies
above, don’t fence me in,” of endless growth, of freedom, of a brighter future,
of a favored relation with God as in the notions of the New Jerusalem and John
Winthrop’s “City upon the Hill.” This thinking is characteristic of the
American imagination.
It is a
primary feature of the American Dream that a person can start with little and
end up with much, going from rags to riches. We have been indoctrinated with
the belief that anyone can grow up to become President, that we are all
potentially living an Horatio Alger story, that prosperity and success lay just
around the corner.
In his 1931
book, Epic of America, James Truslow
Adams wrote:
“The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life
should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each
according to ability and achievement.” And so we have happiness peddlers, snake
oil salesman, get rich quick schemes and trouble, right here in River City.
Deep in the
heart of the American psyche hangs a pall of happiness that obscures our relation
to life. It is woven into our country’s founding and is understood as having
been endowed by our Creator as an unalienable right. We find it in our
Declaration of Independence: the right to Life, liberty, and the pursuit of
Happiness. We have taken these words into our hearts, and we experience the
inevitable outcome of this declaration, which is a perpetual dissatisfaction through
an endless seeking for happiness.
As the late political columnist Max
Lerner observed, “America is a happiness society… The underlying strivings may
be toward success, acquisitiveness, or power, toward prestige or security. But
what validates these strivings for the American is the idea that he has a
natural right to happiness.”
Happiness over the centuries seems
to have become an entitlement for us in the same manner that if some unhappy misfortune
befalls me then somebody better pay up, make it right, whether I’m spilling hot
coffee on my lap at McDonald’s, or I’m the pedestrian hit by a car suing Google
for unsafe directions, or I’m the man carrying a gun into a bar, being wounded
in a shooting, then suing the bar for not searching me when I entered the place,
or I’m holding the fast food industry liable for my obesity, or the families
who held 25 film studios and video game makers responsible for the Columbine
shootings. Somebody owes me dammit! Where’s my piece of the pie?
In the 19th
century, French social critic, DeTocqueville noted in his travels round our
country, “In America, I saw the freest and most enlightened men placed in the
happiest circumstances that the world affords; it seemed to me as if a cloud
habitually hung upon their brow, and I thought them serious and almost sad,
even in their pleasures.”
What we
fail to recognize is that it is in the very search for happiness itself that
the cause of our discontent can be found. This line of thinking always places
fulfillment in the future. We want more, we want bigger, we want better. We
want new and improved. We want it all and we want it now as the song lyric goes
and the advertising industry tells us that we can have it. We yearn to be all
that we can be. We want the quick fix, the fast buck, the newest version, the
latest edition, the most recent upgrade as if settling for less or for second
best somehow rubs against the grain of the American way. Give me that iPad,
iPhone, Kindle, and 3D television.
We have
been breast fed the milk of happiness and we consume it with gusto. In this day
and age, some still believe that there are no limits to growth, to resources,
to problem solving the obstacles in our path. In America, we are taught if we
just apply ourselves, we can achieve anything.
With the zeal of true believers, we seek to rid our lives of all that
hinders, blocks, and frustrates our quest. We desire perfect marriages, happy
children, rewarding parenting, great sex, rich spirituality, harmonious
emotions, conflict resolution, successful endeavors, a joyous inner child,
glowing physical and psychological health, and of course, the great prize,
wholeness.
As an
observer and member of the mental health industry, I’ve witnessed psychological
health become twisted in impossible directions. With the help of positive
affirmations, ten simple ways to change my life program, brief psychotherapy, solution
focused counseling, or positive therapy that keeps me on the sunny side of life,
I can continue to grasp for the brass ring, the one I deserve. The product of
these interventions is intended to be a better person, symptom free and well adjusted
to the demands of daily living. But why is it I want to rid myself so quickly
of depression, worry, disappointment, and failure? Where is my patience to
tolerate the uncertainties and ambiguities in living while they sort themselves
through? What’s with my need to control and direct every aspect of my life?
Where is my faith?
Is it possible that in brief
approaches to people that the result is more likely to be superficial and short
lasting? Is the quality of the outcome similar to Wonder bread and Bud Light,
momentarily filling and satisfying but in the end leaving me wanting more? Is
there anything to be gained by home baked bread, garden grown tomatoes, hand
crafted beers, or relaxed meandering therapies? Wouldn’t I prefer something
that is lovingly and caringly crafted over and against the mass produced
product?
It has been argued that the
defining purpose of the ancient Chinese text, the Tao Te Ching is to endeavor
to bring into focus and sustain a productive disposition “that allows for the
fullest appreciation of those specific things and events that constitute one’s
field of experience.” In fact the title could be translated as “Making This
Life Significant.” Is it possible that this optimizing of experience is
discovered in the savoring and enjoyment available from something that takes time
to prepare, ripen, and mature?
But let’s
face it; I want the sunny side of life without having to experience its shadowy
night and I want it now and forever. I want to ascend to the heavens without
the requisite descent to hell. I believe we are a lopsidedly developed people
limping toward a paradise that recedes into the distance with every step to
bring it closer.
It is this
attitude of grasping for things other than what I have, be it enlightenment or
stuff, and wanting to be other than who I am in this very moment that shapes my
world into a commodity for my private use. A world imagined as commodity has
thingness, but no soul. This attitude promotes the desire to explore the world
seeking oil, gas, riches untold at the expense of environmental and human
degradation. There are no tree spirits in our culture, only lumber, no water nymphs,
only hydro resources, no mister pig or missus cow, simply pork and beef, and recalling
St. Francis, no brother sun nor sister moon. The world is reduced to a thing
and we are alone in the universe, friendless with no allies, humanity against
the world. The American imagination seems to have little room for an animated
and intimate world seeing this ensouled view as simply anthropomorphic.
Is it
possible to break free of this happiness trap? Let me reach back into classical
mythology for a moment. In Greek mythology, there is a significant contrast
between Zeus, King of the Gods, known for his dalliances, never satisfied with
his current state of relational affairs, constantly seeking new fields to plow
where the grass seems greener, and his father, Kronos, who abolishes creativity,
annuls the past, and devours the future. In Roman mythology, Zeus and Kronos
are known respectively as Jupiter and Saturn. For the astrological imagination
Jupiter rules the sign Sagittarius that I mentioned earlier as reflecting the
American outlook on the world. Oddly enough Zeus’ bird, the eagle, known for
its great flight and great vision, became our national emblem.
The astrological Jupiter is
associated with expansiveness, growth, opportunism, enthusiasm, optimism, joy,
buoyancy, levity, and freedom. Saturn on the other hand, is known for matters
that are delayed, limiting, focusing, sobering, serious, constrictive, fated,
and other related expressions. Saturn as the last and furthest planet out
during the centuries when the astrological imagination flourished in the West (before
the discovery of Uranus in the 18th century) was symbolic of the end
of the road, finality, mortality, the grave. It is grave not only in the sense
of death and final resting place, but also grave in the sense of serious and
weighty, issues that are heavy and leaden. Additionally, grave as in to stamp
or impress deeply, to fix permanently. Grave and grieve stem from the same
Latin root, gravis which has to do
with bearing, not only one’s bearing, getting our bearings, but with being
weighed down, and gives us our word gravity. It is easy to see why we avoid
Saturn’s realm. Deprivation, denial, limitation do not blend well with the expansive
‘no limits to what we can do’ American Dream. We are educated to accumulate
stuff, to live in large homes so that we can store our booty. And as we acquire
more stuff , we rent storage space for this excess. We are taught to
accumulate, not to let go, to seek happiness, not to embrace sorrow, yet dark
times are half of the human experience.
Now
if you recall, the qualities associated with Jupiter all tend to carry positive
cultural value – joy, levity, optimism, enthusiasm, frivolity, happiness –
things we all want. Those just mentioned regarding Saturn however, are burdened
by a negative valuation. Who wishes to be bound, weighted, and restrained in their
living? So like heliotropes, we turn toward the levity of Jupiter wanting to
avoid the saturnine world at all cost, and yet in doing so we can live only a
partial life, incapable of affirming the fullness of existence.
Ah, but strangely and fortunately,
life is structured in such a fashion as to remedy its own dilemmas. Taking any
polarity to an extreme, forces a repolarization. For example, if I move in the
direction of north, eventually if I continue this trek, I will be moving south.
The exposure to the extreme cold of dry ice is experienced by me as searingly
hot. Extend the pleasure of an orgasm too long and it becomes painful.
Constantly pursuing happiness ends in disappointment and discontent. Embracing
this discontent, leads to contentment. And this is the paradox, the necessity
of losing one’s soul in order to gain it, as the gospels intone.
So, what must I do to escape the
happiness trap? Absolutely nothing, there’s no escape, there is nothing I can
do in terms of activity, method, or practice to escape this moment. There is no
satisfaction in a future that never arrives; there is only contentment in the
moment when past and future are realized as distractions. We’re all in the same
cosmic soup, sometimes it’s stirred, and sometimes it’s stilled. No one is
ahead and no one is behind. There is only a deeply felt sense of the miraculous
and wondrous absurdity of it all, the awe and the terror, with full
acknowledgement and embracing of it.
In giving up our busyness, our
searching for happiness, the questing for enlightenment, the chronic dissatisfaction
I feel dissipates like clouds clearing away and the sun breaking through. Fate we
discover is no more than freedom, gravity no more than grace and life is
experienced in its fullness. In that moment of clarity, when we have
surrendered any hope for happiness or desire for salvation, the scales will fall
from our eyes, and we will drop our crutches and dance with Life. May we all be
so blessed.
Visit me at AstroCare.net
Visit me at AstroCare.net
