Anodyne

My never ending effort to thin out the mass of books and articles I have accumulated led me to a copy of National Geographic Magazine ( November 2017) that sported this interesting title: “The Search for Happiness.” The premise of the piece was that certain nations had pretty much solved the ageless problem of happiness in life and how to discover it. A two page spread showed a map of the world festooned with happy faces of different sizes and colors meant to graphically depict the level of happiness one could find in various corners of the earth.

In the geography of the soul, peace and joy are the Far Tortugas…sites that are difficult to find, haphazardly charted and minuscule in the vastness of being alive. These states are hard to get to but I assume that things are idyllic upon arrival. Certainly the voyage to those edenic places is fraught with hazards to navigation. There are shoal waters everywhere and reefs of despair are all around. It is hard to feel safe and even harder to set a true course.

But there are some navigational aids. Among the lighthouses, beacons and buoys, is the very reliable direction finder known as pain. For many, happiness is the absence of pain…a complete impossibility in the human condition. For others, it is the vision of the way things should be. The oppression of “should” drives us on the rocks faster than any other error as we set a course. We should have had that promotion, that girlfriend, that house on the hill; if it weren’t for dark forces beyond our control, we would get what we deserve. We cannot – will not – accept life on life’s terms. Ironically, the shoulds do not motivate us to greater efforts or to excellence, more often they lead us to anger, hatred and resentment.

Pain can remind us of our our exact position in the storm. In fact, pain is the price of our passage on our life’s voyage. We learn to endure in the horse latitudes, in the hope that we will arrive on a welcoming shore. Our disappointments can send us racing to an analgesic or inspire us to a course correction. There are pains so great that they can defeat us but the pains we have experienced can also build empathy, compassion and lasting joy if we listen, abide with the discomfort and sail on.

All the finest people I know have become fine because of their reaction to the pains they have experienced. Loss of the beloved, sickness, diminishment have not stopped them. They have given them depth and a curious type of honor. As Keats once asked, “Do you not see how necessary a world of pain and trouble is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”

For those who have experienced great pain in these trying times I wish bon voyage and a true course. Happiness is not in Costa Rica or Denmark, it is within you. I SEE YOUR COURAGE.

Sail on.