Happiness is our natural condition. All you have to do is look at a healthy infant to notice that their default state is one of unfiltered joy. As we grow older, we learn to add to our list of needs. Our wants and needs become confused. Eventually, as Ralph Waldo Emerson pointed out, “Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.”
Our attention has become fractured. We are losing our ability to intuit. We seek increasing stimulation from external sources. When the stimulation is no longer present, when we feel we are not able to meet our “needs,” we pick up the pace or become despondent.
We have to create opportunities for silence – periods of meditation where God speaks to us. This will aid us in understanding our points of individuality and our points of connection. Before we can value our differences, we must accept the things that we have in common. This begins when we seek the answer to the question: “Who am I and why I am here?” I believe that an honest effort to answer that question will prevent the moral nihilism that too many people organize their lives around.
We have the tools for happiness. They can only be accessed when we strip away the extra. They are only effective when we are honest about all the parts that make us who we are. Only then can we discover and work with our real strengths. The world has need of our gifts. They can only be given when we engage in addition by subtraction.
You’ve put in a few decades doing whatever it is you do. How does it end? I was prompted to think about this after a longtime friend came by for dinner. We’ve known each other for close to 35 years. We talked about the paths we’ve been on and the paths we see ourselves taking in the near future. We also reminisced about people we know in common.
Retirement
Our dinner guest is pushing hard. She’s one of the women I talked about in my last post who’s always shown me qualities that were missing in many of my male professional counterparts. She got her Ivy League degree but knew that nothing was promised. She’s hasn’t had it easy but she’s embraced “free agency” and works to improve the lives of those around her.
I was taken aback to hear that friends we went to school with are getting ready to head for retirement and quieter climes in the next year. I was shocked to hear recently that the nephew of a friend had put in his twenty years and was retiring in a year or two and was opening a restaurant/bar.
Maybe what happened to me is…
What’s Next
that I share the view of people like Peter Ragnar who believe that a lot of the aging process is mental. I’ve also taken positions that haven’t provided decent retirement benefits as one of their perks – so temptation is less. My ADD also does not lend itself to a hammock. I am also from the Helen Keller school of thought that says ” security does not exist in Nature. Life is either a daring adventure or it’s nothing.” This is part of the manifesto shared by me and my fellow Ronin.
God does not promise security in this life. The author Philip Yancey points out that we don’t get to know God and then do his will – we get to know God by doing his will. Like my parents, I choose to “wear out rather than rust out.” It took me a while, but I realize that my wife’s complaints about our path are mainly pro forma. In many ways she pushes harder than I do. She does this in the face of the paradoxes that come with being a good Christian. The more you do, the more is demanded and gratitude be damned.
The reasons for staying on or stepping off may be the result of evolution, genetics, or something else. Some of us are built a different way. Some deal with the difficulty of the now – they live how they believe Christ lived, and they accept that God will determine the value of all these efforts at some point in the distant future. You are not alone. I respect and admire those who have decided that their race has been run. But there are those of us who are not content with where we are and what we’ve done and we will keep moving. The Talmud, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Bible all recognize that we cannot possibly finish the work set before us – but we will not be excused for not taking it up.
This post was going to be in the form of a video but that will come later in the week. My wife is nervous that people who have seen my videos believe that I have lost my mind. I pointed out two things to her. The first is that most of the readers of this blog have never met me, so you will assume that whatever you see here is just who I am. The second thing I pointed out is that my insanity has always been part of my charm. This post is about our reluctance to embrace change and the mysterious.
Our attachment to the Age of Reason has moved us away from our essential nature. For men, that has meant the loss of the Warrior Spirit. For all of us it has meant a counterintuitive loss of sophistication and complexity. If we ignore the connections among Mind, Body, and Spirit, then we become only stick people. When life’s problems do not fall before our reasoned approaches, we are all of a sudden at a loss and unable to move forward.
The field of psychoneuroimmunology is pointing to the consequences when there is a disconnect between the mind and body. Reason has its place but it’s also about doing and nurturing, reflection and action. Too many of us stop short on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and have no idea that moving towards self-actualization and a belief in something larger than ourselves will prevent our descent into lives of “quiet desperation.”
Learn how to really breathe, make your workouts (if you even workout!) more complex and sophisticated, understand what it means to truly love, give up your scientific humanism for the miraculous, and find your True North.
Well, after this, my wife may be wishing for the video 
Providing under-served children with real school choice is something I am passionate about. I was fortunate to have a visit last week from a guy named Bob Muzikowski. He is the founder and head of Chicago Hope Academy. This Christian-based school has done amazing work in its brief existence. They are clear in their mission and character education flows naturally through the curriculum. Their athletic teams are successful and represent what team sports are supposed to develop.
This is a life mission for Muzikowski and he has put his bucket down in a difficult part of the United States. I wish more people did the hard work and looked for the elements that make for a complete education and I wish there were more “workers” like Bob Muzikowski because “the harvest is plenty.”
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