#99
what? success? how did I do that?

Welcome to #99 out of the 100 blog posts I set out to write. It appears likely that I’m actually going to complete a project. This proves that it’s possible to set and reach a goal, even for depressed, procrastinating, discipline-resistant me.
I have not cleaned up the mess in my house. I have not looked for a job. I have not overcome depression. I have not gotten the new tires for my car. I have not yet staked the tomatoes — maybe it’s too late for that.
A surprising number of things you think you should do just go away if you ignore them for long enough. I thought if I turned my back on this life, the whole thing would just go away. And of course, it will.
But is that really what I want? Of course not. I want to stake the tomatoes (maybe next year), I want to clean up the mess, I want to work, I want new tires on my car, and I want to live my life the same way I’ve written these 99 blogs — looking forward to it every day when I wake up.
What stops me from a happy life? What’s in the way? That’s become the most interesting question in my overactive banana-eating flea-scratching primate mind. The question is so interesting that I feel quite certain I will not give up on it until I find the answer. It feels like a question that actually has an answer, unlike philosophical speculation. This question feels like a jack-in-the-box, child’s play — just keep cranking the handle until it pops.
When I was a child I used to lie in my bed and think about philosophical questions. My father was a physicist, he started it I think. Entropy? How can the whole universe just run down like a wind-up clock? I tried to imagine it. Infinity? What is that? I tried and tried to picture it. My parents weren’t religious, but I thought about God too. We lived in a Catholic neighborhood, just two blocks from the church with the round blue stained glass window that glowed at night. I was intrigued. I remember trying to imagine what God was, and the image that came to mind (I wonder how old I must have been?) was a jack-in-the-box. First you hear a song, and then he pops up smiling, and you laugh.

What good is God? Of what use is infinity? What’s the point of anything if it can’t help me here in the life of car tires and banana peels and itchy skin that I am stuck in? If God is real, and God is love, why don’t I feel loved? Why am I so sad? I can imagine a loving God, and as long as I hold that image in my mind I feel semi-ok, sometimes even blissful. But it’s a lot of work to hold it there. Why doesn’t it just stick? If God is real and I don’t feel loved, there must be something blocking the love from my awareness.
I am not an atheist. I do think there’s something real in the idea of God. I don’t pretend to know what it is. I am not a happy person. But neither have I given up on the idea of happiness. I believe it’s possible. If only I could see what’s blocking it! This is where the notion of dissociation makes so much sense. Who on earth would NOT want to be happy? And why? I can actually FEEL the resistance in myself. There are parts of me singing along with Groucho Marx — “Whatever it is, I’m against it.”
I’m going to investigate. Time to get to know these enemies of happiness.
