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.
