Today is one of the most boring days I can remember. I have been sitting at home all day waiting for one phone call. I’ve received 4 phone calls, which is 4 more than I usually get, but none is the one I’m waiting on. I’m just wasting time, waiting.
Waiting alone is not a good thing. The house is empty. I’ve drunk so much coffee I’m sort of fidgety. My dog is infinitely patient sitting near the gas logs napping, which makes my impatience all the more intolerable. I went to bed at 12:30 and stayed in bed till about 12, again waiting.
You have weird dreams when you sleep that long. The 4 phone calls this morning all woke me up, which is why I remember the dreams. I can’t return those calls otherwise I’d tie up the phone. Of course the minute I get on the phone, they would be trying to call to offer me a job.
I’ve been looking for a job a long time. My dad told me last night he was proud I have been so patient in looking for the right job. “A lesser man would’ve settled for something 6 months ago and been unhappy with it,” he said.
I say a better man would’ve found a good job six months ago, and as far as being happy with it: I’ve never proven I can be happy at a job; what makes me think I can do it now? Actually, I was happy at camp….although that lasted only 10 weeks.
Actually, this time I have a good feeling about my potential job satisfaction. Why? I’ve learned a great deal about self-control over the past 5 years. The best and most sustainable way to achieve some sort satisfaction with your life is to decide that it will be so.
This is exceedingly difficult to do, and requires a degree of mastery of self that is near impossible. How well can you police bad thoughts and remove yourself from negative environments when you often don’t know if the thoughts and environments are negative until after you’ve experienced them? By then it’s too late.
I think, really, the discussion is moot. I’ve said I will get a job, for reasons explained in earlier posts. This is both a decision and a realization that, without working, food clothing and shelter can become a challenge.
Our preoccupation with happiness is a seldom recognized affliction of modern affluence. How wonderful is it to be able to worry over the capriciousness of our wandering spirit? In the past no one cared whether or not you were happy, least of all the unhappy. A hungry stomach is indifferent to the mental state of its vessel.
Before civilization I doubt we even had a dim grasp on the many shades of happiness. It is only with the dawn of excess a few thousand years ago that people were afforded the extended idleness needed to consider whether or not they enjoyed existing.
As we got better and better at making stuff we created enough surplus for ever larger numbers of us to be idle to consider our inner state. We went from a few Greek playwrights to, thousands of years later, entire movements of literary thinkers lounging around Paris essentially complaining that life was meaningless because they no longer had to scrounge for food, clothing and shelter. Only the well fed can afford to be depressed.
This brings us to today, where it is assumed that happiness is a birthright. It is no coincidence that unhappiness has increased as a result. As I have found through experience, thinking you must always be happy can itself become a source of unhappiness when you find it is impossible to attain, thus believing that it is some defect in yourself or unfairness of the world that is impeding your eternal inner peace.
When modern life, with all its complexities, is seen in these terms, we should be grateful even to have the opportunity to consider whether or not we think we are happy.
Before that Buddha stated it quite simply: All Life Is Suffering.
And in those days, it likely was.
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