The Wastelands

A lot of our favorite philosophies, theologies, ideologies arrive as rebellious retaliation of the previous generation’s values. In theology, this often looks like a pendulum of: God is love, God is justice; in culture we are working towards an equilibrium of personal value for all human persons: women, non-white racial opportunity, civil rights options for those with varying sexual preferences, though cultural mindset moves slowly, pushing against a mountainous inertia of bigotry; and our ideologies often gag on war most following a bloodthirsty example, and most feast on imperialism after a brief spat of peace.

This swing has tempered a little as the freight of the internet wakes by, leaving only the opinions and arguments of anonymous naysayers and the burnt-road pathways of those waging new battles – it’s a graveyard, a haunted cathedral, a thousand lasers flying through empty space, never touching. And everyone, opinions or no, wants that flare-up-high of attention, that brief, orgasmic stardom, that glimmer of disgust, anger, joy, or reaction and then out like magnesium, blinding and then gone.

But if you want something lasting, what then? If your appetite is larger than immediate and next, how to whet the sacred hungers? More than many, my life seesaws on a balance, not merely camping on gluttony, but swinging between fasting and feasting. It’s not bipolar, but a antsy flailing for balance, as I stand on the barrel of life and roll down the whitewater rapids.

And happiness can be a drug. Until you’ve found it, you cannot imagine the addiction, the drag, the earnest importance of more,more,more. In the same way running releases endorphins, as sex releases oxytocin and endorphins, as every drug inhibits or multiplies enzymes and neurotransmitters, a fluctuating, dramatic instability of reality. Everything we intake alters internal physiology to some extent, whether it’s food, sunlight, touch, or sound.  

Happiness is strange in that I can’t remember a time I rebounded from it. A cause of happiness might unsettle me if I’m rebelling from the ideologies behind it, and I may even be disgusted by my happiness at gluttony, sloth, or pride at certain times, but from the happiness itself I rarely find myself aghast. I never think, “I wish I had less cause for smiling today” or “today was depressing and I hope tomorrow is a real downer.”

I don’t believe many people truly seek sorrow in permanence, though such people exist. Why? For the same two-second spotlight? For a sympathetic touch or love in passing? There are always reasons. But those are not my shoes. Today, I’m happy. I don’t want to pendulate, or seesaw, or whip back into any other place; I like this one, and here I’ll stay.

Was I always happy? I believe I might have been. But I haven’t found the endless bounds yet.