The Fragility of Happiness

Beautiful children — as opposed to my previous written chatter, this one is without a preconceived distinct message. It is more an active dialogue between me and myself. I utilize the therapeutic power of creative writing to introspect and self-analyze. I decided to share this one as I believe there may be some degree of potential value from sharing this truth. And even if not… at least you got to better understand your father.

I’m writing this text while sitting alone next to a warm and embracing campfire. Above me a clearing amongst the trees showing the most beautiful array of shining stars, reassuringly reminding me we are a speck of dust in this never-ending cosmos of ours. Pinecrest campground in California is not empty this time of the year, even though we’re in an off-season weekday. Luckily, the vast majority of adjacent campers are fast asleep, and I remain with the distinct feeling of being entirely alone in nature. Just as I like it. I am totally in my element. I am happy.

These last few months, traveling the world with my family, detached from western society, were uniquely good. In my wildest and most audacious dreams, I never envisioned being so happy for so long. I remember many times where I literally felt as if I’m walking around in a waking dream, finding it hard to believe this new state of being can actually exist with me at its center.

This sense of happiness and contentedness changed me inside. It adjusted my expectations from life and, at this point, I feel I will find it hard to accept a significant compromise. My relationship with my beloved has never been so amazing. We are together for almost 23 years and I still find myself observing her, in love, as if we’re back being teenagers. My relationship with you, my children, has reached blissful highs — After years of me being a neglectful workaholic, striving to move forward in my ‘successful life’, I finally repositioned my role in your life. I am your father, as Darth Vader put it. But, in a much healthier sense of the phrase.

Finally, my relationship with myself and with life has completely morphed. The birds are my friends these days. I find myself more and more able to listen to their playful chatter. It’s always there, wherever I find myself. It always was, but now I hear it more. I finally am, just am, and not running around from errand to errand, fulfilling some virtual task list that will lead me to its perpetual continuance. I learned, through my travels, that the key to my personal state of contentedness is a strive to a relative nothing and in the past few months I was the closest I’ve ever been to successfully experiencing life in that manner.

However, while this positively slanted journey was happening, a new personal phenomenon was brewing. This lasting elevated state of self along with a healthy dose of arrogance made me complacent. I started believing I got it figured out. Life from now on will continue being so good and so blessed. My sad days are behind me and it’s all uphill from here till the end. I was wrong. I had awakened, that’s correct, but I didn’t perceive how easy it is to start dozing again.

I came back to California. The place I left, or more correctly the modern society I briefly escaped, to explore this new stage of life. I came back for a visit as we all wanted to reunite with our dear friends and family. We were all extremely excited to come and share love with our loved ones. What I didn’t expect is the utter sense of turmoil this visit, back into the western civilization, will create for me and my beloved.

I can’t fully explain it yet but going back to the scene of my previous life created a sense similar to a post-traumatic panic attack. Suddenly, this place that I loved so much, a place that has given me some of the best moments of my life and introduced me to the most impactful community I’ve ever had the fortune of being a part of — this place felt like the lion’s den. Everything seemed wrong. I couldn’t accept much of it. Everywhere I looked I kept seeing people, deeply entrenched in the rat race of life, looking so similar to one another in their sets of priorities and lifestyle. I realized what used to be normal and blissful is no longer that for me. I found it hard to imagine being orgasmically happy in this place, similar to how I actually felt in the last few months. It made me scared, pondering whether I can fit back into this or whether I even want to.

My heart was yearning to position myself in a place of ultimate acceptance to individualism and tempo of life. Where safety exists to become whoever I’d like to become without anyone around judging or, more accurately, caring about my decisions or behavior. To belong to a loose community of people who sanctify life as I see them and reduce the tempo of lifestyle to one that will enable and empower to pursue life rather than achieve milestones. However, my brain was telling me that what I consider mainstream is not a bad notion. It grounds you and allows you to interact with the world in a normative way, thus enabling a relatively an easier, stigma-free, complication-less and smoother existence.

This was extremely scary as the path I’ve scribbled for myself going forward placed me back in this type of so-called normal environment — right in this so-called matrix. I had no plan B. I realized I will not allow myself to risk my children’s upbringing and relocate them to some quiet and remote global hippie community, as I strongly believe I must provide them with tools to deal with the world and not with a limited bubble, be it as beautiful as it may. To be honest, I don’t know if I am ready for that type of detachment. The fear of these two potentially contradicting truths — one being I wish to be a responsible parent and the second where I may be miserable, assimilating to the alleged normal world, was hard to digest.

My brain was telling me I’m extremely over-hyping this as this is a safe, comfortable and conducive place, but my heart was screaming of alarm. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to convey any of this to my friends and support system. From their perspective, I was making no sense, in many ways, rightfully so. Coming back after almost a year with a strong sense of aversion for the place I loved so much was not something they could embrace easily. Whenever I tried to share it, I immediately received defensive reactions. People were perceiving my distress as a challenge to their lifestyle. It was hard to blame them.

In the few weeks I stayed there I became secluded. The once clown of the party became the sad mime. Not being able to share my pain and being perceived as distant, propelled a negative cycle and within a couple of weeks, I found myself looking into at an abyss of depression.

My beloved was no different. Her process was similar to mine. We both felt alone and counted the days until our departure just that we can find some breathing space to figure out what the fuck is happening. Our partnership suffered greatly, and we weren’t supporting one another, to say the least. Instead of leaning on the other, we found ourselves spewing poisonous interactions which only added fuel to the flames. It all came to an unavoidable valley where we spent a few days just attacking one another.

Luckily, there’s nothing that will stop time from moving forward and eventually we were able to detach, just the five of us and go outdoors. Nature — the great healer. Removed yet again from civilization we started recovering and continued with an attempt to understand what happened. How could we transition so quickly from a state of utter bliss to a slump of darkness?

At this point, I don’t feel I have an accurate answer. However, answers I will get. Knowing myself I will be relentless in an introspective analysis, trying to figure out what this means for my future. How should I design the context of life so that I am a responsible parent, a member of the right community (which remains to be critically important to my life) and still serving my new set of priorities that focuses on immediacy rather than procrastination, cherishing this delicate, short and highly impermanent gift of life. Now that I am no longer present in an exceedingly over-stimulus environment, I can find the bandwidth to attempt and identify that golden path going forward. Hopefully, I’ll succeed.

However, be what it may, this whole ordeal taught me about the fragility of happiness. I don’t know if it’s me, lacking humility, or just a natural human tendency, but complacency is nothing short of a virus. It is a trait that negatively contributes to the sinusoidal amplitude of life. It is a main reason for the never-ending happy-sad, content-discontent tempo of my existence. Complacency is just a fancier way of saying things are being taken for granted. As with anything, once I go there, I treasure less, lower my conscious guard and hold less gratitude.

The truth is, as I’ve just shared and have experienced countless times before, everything is extremely temporary. Today I will touch Nirvana and tomorrow, with a flick of a finger, I will be reduced to the bottom of an emotional dark hole. There is no security in any elated state of being and this is not said to scare but rather to appreciate! Tragedies are an inevitable part of life. The cliché that the only certainty in life is its ending is, at the end of the day, extremely accurate. Complacency is the guarantee I will miss and ignore the appreciation and thankfulness of beautiful moments.

One of the rare occasions where the Hebrew language is more precise than English (keep in mind my English is so-so) is with the differentiation of two states of happiness. One — the word ‘Sa-Meh-Ach’, relating to a temporary state of happiness. For example, you are dancing at a party while on vacation. The second — “Meh-Oo-Shar” — relating to the continuous baseline of one’s level of happiness. Oddly enough, or not, this word is very similar to the word “Ashir” which translates to ‘Rich’.

I found I experienced many more moments of happiness (Samehach) in my former life. I laughed more, ate hearty meals, consumed cannabis, went on vacations and more. I was the heart of the party, but it was, to a large part, a means to escape a general sense lower base level happiness. Then I discovered I am able to elevate my baseline (Mehooshar). To feel content as a continuing state of being. My need to escape reduced to zero. I had no need for extravagant food and drugs and partying. I found I can be happy with the birds chirping above me. In the beginning, I felt immense gratitude but as time passed I got used to it and became complacent.

I find I am unwilling to escape into these short-lived happy moments. I am not ready to make that compromise. For me, at this point, it will be giving up on life as I wish it. In my former life I spent a few weeks a year vacationing, I went camping every couple of months, I sat with my friends smoking weed a few nights every week, all to take a break from life. It was normal, and I saw it as a necessary part of existence — these short-lived moments, I thought, defined my happiness, not the remaining majority of my life.

Now I am greedy and have no remorse about it. I’ve awakened. I’ve tasted a better life and I want it to be my entire life. It doesn’t mean I will be on constant vacation — not at all — that is the way my old me would have approached it. It means I will be extremely vocal about the right set of priorities and truly incorporate those into my decision making today and not tomorrow after I reach that unattainable, whatever, random goal. It means being will be an unapologetic part of my lifestyle, in addition to doing.

I have no doubt that becoming awake, as arrogant as it may sound, is but a necessary stepping stone on the way to a better life. It brings about an amazing and beautiful benefit but also an inherent risk. Falling back into sleep or, in other words, allowing the (for lack of better terms) illness of western society attract me back into a state of inertia, is much easier than I’ve anticipated. Knowing the upside and not being able to experience it, holds the potential of misery. Once the ‘Red Pill’ is ingested (a Matrix metaphor) it can never be undone.

I’m not ready to have the birds’ jolly chatter pass me by unnoticed again — I want to be done with that. I feel that I’ve gathered an array of skills and understandings to allow me to go there and move forward. It’s much easier to detach yourself from stimuli and live as a carefree, drunk on life, hermit. Incorporating happy life into life is a necessary stage two. I am extremely thankful to receive another important lesson to assist me with my journey — the true understanding that all of this good, whatever high and however long it lasts, can be done within a second and therefore should be cherished, appreciated and not taken for granted. May I never forget this!

Love,

Dad.