Rachel’s Musings

Richard Eckersley presents in his book Well & Good “two scientific descriptions of the world, which represent the extremes of the modern scientific worldview” (220). At least that is his claim. He first presents a description by Richard Dawkins from his article God’s Utility Function in Scientific American:

In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

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In the United States, we almost seem obsessed with finding happiness, which is rather ironic because “it is not something to be sought or pursued, but a result of how we live” (Richard Eckersley. Well & Good. 104). From early on, we are taught that we will find happiness once we’ve found our soul mate. We’ll “live happily ever after.” What gets lost in this matrimania myth is teaching on how we can create a life that invites happiness without demanding that someone else be responsible for it.

Eckersley gives us some hints based on his review of what the “wise and famous” said (104):

• Focus on others, not ourselves.
• Balance wants and means.
• Be content with what we have.

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I am reading an interesting book about happiness, Well & Good, written by an Australian researcher, Richard Eckersley. It is a great book that is reflecting some of the questions that I’ve been grappling with: there is something that is tying many of the issues we’re facing together. Eckersley also attributes a lot of our current malaise to misplaced answers to the questions of meaning and belonging. I am a little leery about his references to spirituality but I haven’t read the book far enough yet to know exactly where he’s going with that. I look forward to sharing a book summary in the not too distant future.

I cannot resist, though, to comment on Eckersley’s bold false statement in reply to his questions what makes a person happy      Continue reading this post » » »

As I was waking up this morning, in that state of not-quite-awakeness, the name Sisyphus bubbled up. Somehow the idea of dragging myself out of bed to do almost exactly the same thing I had done the day before, felt like a Sisyphean task. Noticing the beginnings of a meaning crisis (an existential depression), I forced the thought away and got up. As I woke up more fully, Sisyphus returned. This time I became intrigued: There certainly is something to our days that is very much like the myth of Sisyphus. Just like Sisyphus rolls a boulder up a hill only to have it roll down and start all over again, we do the same things day in day out. That’s called routine. And while there can be something rather comforting about it, routines contain the kernels of a meaning crisis since they have removed us from the effort of making meaning. Then I remembered something else: According to Camus’ telling of the story, Sisyphus was happy. According to Eric Maisel’s take on the story, this mythical character is happy because he “reckoned with the facts of existence” (The Van Gogh Blues, p. 99). He accepted reality, even though that reality involved that he’d be doing the same seemingly meaningless task over and over and over again. In Maisel’s words, Sisyphus forced meaning onto his existence and thus created happiness (or at least, avoided a meaning crisis). Sisyphus could roll the boulder up the hill while complaining that the boulder is too heavy, that he shouldn’t have to do this, that this is ridiculous work, that it is utterly meaningless - fighting reality. This would create unhappiness because it steals meaning from life. I know because I’ve done that way too frequently at my job. But we can do the same as Sisyphus has obviously done: defiantly deciding to be happy no matter what reality brings.

There is another message in the myth of Sisyphus, though: It takes effort. Not only is rolling a boulder up a hill difficult but maintaining a sense of contentment, let alone happiness, takes work as well. Back to my morning: I had to mentally kick myself out of bed. I had to exert an effort to refuse to be drawn down into a meaning crisis by the idea of my Sisyphean day. It took me a while. It took a lot of mental effort, a conscious choice to make meaning, to refuse to be drawn in by my negative self-talk. One thing that I find helpful in cases like this is to connect with others, including strangers, sometimes willfully faking a cheerful attitude until it takes over. As I was walking to the bus stop, still teetering close to the edge of a meaning crisis, I saw the father and son walking down the street I see on many mornings. I don’t know their names. I suspect that the father drops his toddler son off at day care. This morning, I forced myself to smile at them, to say good morning. Making an effort to smile at the first stranger I passed seemed like pushing a boulder up a mountain. The smile was answered, my effort rewarded, making the boulder just a little bit lighter to roll up the hill. Human connections are very important to me, even the small gestures toward strangers seem to help bring more joy into my life. Deep connections with friends are longer lasting and build a stronger foundation. Yet, even the small gestures help and are essential when friends are busy with other things. We cannot rely on one basket to fill our life with happiness.

Jennifer Michael Hecht writes in her book The Happiness Myth: “Happiness maintenance work is creating things to look forward to on a daily basis; arranging some peak experience for yourself occasionally; and making sure the overall story of your life has some feelings of progress and growth” (135-6). I realized this morning that the things to create daily need to be outside of our routine. The routine numbs our minds and hearts, it closes us to the opportunities to make meaning, to find happiness. We need to do something out of that routine to feel alive, the foundation of happiness. To me that out of the ordinary was a simple “good morning” to someone I had never acknowledge before. A stranger, yet not a stranger, since I see the father-son pair almost every morning. Noticing that I was wearing the same sweater that I wore yesterday because I had forgotten that I worn it just the day before, thus breaking the thou-shalt-not-wear-the-same-thing rule, helped, too. It created another opportunity to go beyond the routine and laugh at myself. Not taking life so serious is another way to get out of my routine. Slowly, the danger of a meaning crisis seems to be fading, though I am still making an effort to notice the small things that can add to my joy, just to make sure I don’t slip and fall into the hole of a crisis.

Part of choosing to be single included for me a conscious commitment to myself and my life. Too often, my life had been hijacked by a relationship and every time I was left to rebuild my path. Well, actually, sometimes I even had to find that path all over again. I half-heartedly had decided to do this before but ended up in yet another detour relationship. So, I decided that this time, I needed to go out all the way. Sasha Cagan talks about marrying herself in her Quirkyalone book. I didn’t quite feel like having a marriage ceremony but I thought I could steal some ideas. I got a cheap ring to wear on my left hand’s ring finger (after all that’s the commitment finger, isn’t it?). I put the ring on every morning while repeating my vow to live authentically to myself. I also spent some time writing up my mission - really more of a statement of intent of where I’d like to see myself in a few years. I found this rather difficult because I was stuck with the idea that I somehow needed to discover my mission, that somehow I had an inborn mission that I simply needed to uncover. Well, despite reading a lot of self-help books this uncovery seemed to be impossible. It seemed no matter how much I dug, I couldn’t find my mission. It wasn’t until I read Eric Maisel’s Van Gogh Blues that I realized that I had the option of making my own meaning, of deciding on my mission. That shift - from seeking to making - helped a lot and I was able to move forward with writing a mission statement for myself. In the meantime, I stumbled on a silversmith who engraves rings, among other things. I decided that I was worth the expense and engraved a short version of my vow on a ring, which I now wear on my left ring finger.

I am finding that staying true to myself is a continuous experience - it weaves through everything from what I write about to what books I read and, of course, the people I associate with. But it helps me to feel more grounded. It also helps me to figure out my priorities.

I have since discovered a couple of books that might be helpful for others who would like to create their own commitment: Patricia Lynn Reilly’s Promise Yourself, which actually guides you through developing your own self-commitment vow and Mary Goldenson’s It’s Time, which helped me let go of things and start building my own life rather than waiting for Prince Charming.

That is the key of the Your Money or Your Life (YMOYL) program devised by Joe Dominguez back in the 1960s “to extricate himself from the shackles of wage slavery” (xv). The longer version of this equation is: “Money is something we choose to trade our life energy for” (54). Dominguez argues that this reflects the essence of money, after dismissing the traditional definition of money as a means of exchange, which he argues is only valid “within the confines of cultural agreement” (51). A lot of time is spent in the accompanying steps to drive this point home. Money earned and spent is tracked down to the last penny and then converted to the life energy. Supposedly doing this helps reduce spending and ultimately reach financial independence. For me, it led me down the path to Ebenezer Scrooge. Because I didn’t like questioning every dime I spent, I took a more skeptical look at the program.

What is life energy? It is essentially time; the time we’re alive. So, money = time. We trade our time for money. That sounds to me like it’s a means of exchange: I give my employer time, she gives me money. Our cultural agreement is that we get money for the time we spend on the job. The underlying premise of the program seems to be that we’re wasting our time at work to buy stuff we don’t need. And as soon as people see that by tracking every penny, their spending drops magically so that they can get out of debt and retire early. If this doesn’t happen after you finished the program, you must’ve skipped a step. Magic only happens if you follow each and every step religiously.

The idea behind the program is a noble one. I think many of us do overspend and buy stuff that we don’t really need. And despite all of our spending, happiness remains elusive. There is a lot to be said for simplifying our lives and decreasing our footprint on this planet. The program ignores though something very fundamental: why people consume and overspend. It’s not because they haven’t realized that they’re wasting their time at jobs (which is in itself a rather arrogant assumption: some people like their jobs). It’s because we have needs and wants that are not being fulfilled by our modern society. We fill these gaping holes with stuff. Sure, maybe if we spent less time at our jobs, we have more time to built community and enjoy our lives. But why do I have to waste my precious time tracking every penny I spend? Why do I have to figure out exactly how much I have earned over my life, including allowances and money earned watching babies? I think by ignoring the underlying issue - the unmet needs - the program has turned into a rather mechanistic process, boiling everything down to charts that show our spending behavior.

To lead a more fulfilling life, you have to track every penny you spend. Well, no, not really. To lead a more fulfilling life, you need to figure out what adds to your life and what doesn’t. Money is a tool, a thing. It is not time. It is not life energy. Equations like that put way too much emphasis on it. Dominguez touches on fulfillment but he again ties it to money: fulfillment is reached if the amount of money you spent on something was worth it. He becomes money-obsessed, too. Charts and tables are not going to change our attitudes toward money. We can simply ask after a purchase “was this worth the money?” (Or even better ask that before a purchase!) We don’t have to go through the convoluted process of tying this to life energy, which does not even exist. More importantly are those questions that Dominguez only briefly touches on: What brings me most fulfillment? What is “enough” for me? Did how I spent my time or money add to my life? Money and time are two distinct things. Money is a means of exchange - whether you put the intermediary “life energy” in there or not. Time is something less tangible but it is certainly finite for each and every one of us. Instead of writing down how much you spend on that cup of coffee, smell the coffee, taste the coffee, and enjoy it. And if it didn’t taste good, buy something else the next time. Or maybe, just sit in the sun and enjoy the warmth. Our society is already too money-obsessed, we don’t have to turn that obsession on its head because it will remain an obsession. Money is not that important to spend our life energy on! Time is the real precious commodity.