Guilty Pleasures

Where your pleasure is,
there is your treasure;
Where your treasure is,
there is your heart;
Where your heart is,
there is your happiness.
- Saint Augustine

Why do we feel guilty about feeling good? Why do we save the things that give us pleasure for special occasions?

It's a paradox - we feel guilty about feeling good because we feel like we are taking away from someone else. But we feel guilty about feeling bad, because, as we tell ourselves, someone else always has it worse.

Aren't we all in the "pursuit of happiness?" Isn't that what so many feel is the meaning of life - to just be happy? Why then do we talk ourselves into feeling bad about it when we finally get there?

Most philosophers agree that happiness and pleasure are byproducts of the things we do. As they say, it's the journey, not the destination. Even Aristotle talked about our pursuit of pleasure, noting that as humans, we are incapable of continuous pleasure because we are incapable of continuous activity - and pleasure is what comes with the activity.

In Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl put it this way:

"Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the byproduct of one's surrender to a person other than oneself."

John Stuart Mill, the utilitarian philosopher, said:

"But I now thought that this end [one's happiness] was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness[....] Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness along the way[....] Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so."

I'm not sure how I feel about all of this. I continue to seek things that give me pleasure, wanting and hoping to be "happy." To think of pleasure as a byproduct seems to lessen it somehow to me. But I do agree - at least for me, happiness is found in the happiness of others. And most often, we find happiness when we are not looking for it.

I like to think of our emotional "stuff" (our "baggage") like a backpack we always have with us. We are taught that, to be happy, we are to take that backpack, dump it out (to a friend, or a therapist, or a family member, or a random stranger in line at the grocery store) and then leave it where we dumped it. But that doesn't work. Why? Because we have memories. There are too many things we can't leave behind.

I like to visualize working through my emotional stuff in this way - I take my backpack, dump it out, and try to sort through the things I need or don't need for the rest of the journey. There are some things I can leave behind forever. There are some things I'll hold on to, "just in case." There are some things that I know I'll need. And there are some things I am just not ready to let go of.

The best I can do sometimes is to toss a few things to lighten my load, and the rest I put back in my pack in a more organized way. It helps to sort through things, because it makes it easier for us to find the things we need when we need them.

A lot of the things in our backpacks are things we need - they are the things we've learned that keep us safe, that help us navigate the trail, that shelter us and nourish us and comfort us. When we go through difficult situations, we carry the tools from that experience in our backpacks. Sometimes we also carry things we won't always need, like the feelings of hurt, which we'll let go of if and when we're ready.

After losing my son, I experienced an early miscarriage a few months later. It was a setback, for sure, bringing back the memories of losing my son, of my body's failure, of the guilt at having such a hard time carrying a pregnancy. But when I talked about that experience, I talked about tools. I compared it to digging a big hole. When I lost Eroll, I had to dig the hole by hand. Every day, digging a hole with just my fingers and fingernails. It was hard, painful work. But through it, I learned to make my own tools. When I had the miscarriage, I still had to dig a hole, and it was still hard, painful work. But now I had a shovel. It didn't mean I didn't have to dig the hole, I still had to do the work. But now I had tools.

I like to think that many of the things in our backpacks are just that - tools that we've learned to create along the way. For many of them, we just never know when we might need them.

So, do we have tools in our backpacks that give us pleasure? (cue gutter-thoughts here) Do we carry things with us that make us happy?

Pleasure is thought to be an individual experience - what gives me pleasure may not be the same for you. Pleasure can be found in pretty much any physical, sensual, emotional, or mental experience, at least by someone. I find pleasure in music, writing, food, sex, relationships. Some people find pleasure in exercise, public recognition, drugs.

I don't want to get into the meaning of life or what makes us happy. I guess what I wonder is, why do we feel guilty when we feel pleasure? Pleasure is part of the human experience, we are hard-wired for it, and every one of our senses is capable of experiencing pleasure as well as pain.

My theory is that we feel guilty because we feel by receiving pleasure, we are taking it away from someone else. I wonder what it is about our culture that makes us feel that way. Why do we feel ashamed about feeling good? As long as your pleasure does not cause someone else to hurt, why not do it?

I don't like the term "guilty pleasures" - if something gives you pleasure, embrace it. If you aren't hurting someone else, don't feel guilty about it. There is so much about the universe that gives us pleasure. I think denying that, closing our eyes to the experiences that make us feel good, is where we should feel guilty.



...

Cracks

"There is a crack, a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in."
- Leonard Cohen

I find it beautiful that no matter how you try to shut light out, it has a way of getting in. Closing a bedroom door at night, with a sliver of light crawling in from the bottom of the door. Drawing the curtains, only to be awakened by a piercing sun beam stabbing its way through the crack between them.

That's the amazing thing about light - no matter what we do, it has a way of getting in. We can close our eyes or draw the shades tighter and try to shut it out. Or we can throw the curtains open and embrace it.

After I lost my son, I was in a very dark place for a long time - at least 18 months. Nothing looked or felt right, like a fog or an old black and white movie with specks and lines in it. I was a ghost of a human being. I am sure seasons changed, the sun shone, but I don't remember it. All I remember is gray.

There were lights that tried to get in, but they were too bright for the dark place where I was, like the pain your eyes feel emerging from a dark theater into bright sunlight. There was one light that I let in, because it was new, and it healed me. It was the light of my nephew who, in allowing me to love him and loving me in return as only an infant can, healed me in ways I never could have found on my own. I read once that to heal from grief, find something you love and love it.

Losing my son broke me, shattered me. I had been broken and cracked before, as we all experience in life, but never shattered. I visualize myself and all lives as vases. Beautiful, fragile, capable of holding so much. My vase for sure had chips and cracks. But losing Eroll was like someone had picked me up and thrown me violently to the floor.

If you've ever broken something like that, you know that pieces fly everywhere - some so small they are never recovered. And pretty much every time something is shattered like that, it is a lost cause. Irreparable. Best to sweep up the pieces and put them into the trash.

Thinking of a life shattered like that, it's not hard to see and understand why some people never recover. Can you imagine taking those tiny pieces - thousands of them - and trying to put them back into what they once were?

I like to believe this is what I did and am still doing, fully knowing and acknowledging that the vase of myself will never be the same. There will be scars of the brokenness, there will be pieces forever missing.

Before this retreat time, I found this quote that I posted:

"When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something has suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful." ~Barbara Bloom

I have always found beauty in brokenness, but I am not sure that I did that, filled my cracks with gold. I think I've tried to smooth over the cracks, to make it appear that I was whole, normal.

I had a revelation about 18 months after losing Eroll. Driving home from work, on a gray day in a gray city, I realized that I could allow Eroll to be a cloud over my life, a dark place I could not get out of. Or I could choose to let him be the light in my life. I didn't want people to see my anger, bitterness, and depression and say, "She is that way because of her son." I wanted people to say, "She is loving, compassionate, and joyful because of her son." This day was a turning point in my healing and in my coming alive again.

Cracks are always thought of as negative. They are places where we experience leaks, where we lose things, where there is a risk of further breakage, of weakness, where things can get in, or get out.

One of my favorite spiritual teachers is Sobonfu Somé. She came to the U.S. from Burkina Faso in West Africa and is a voice for indigenous wisdom and spirituality. At a new age bookstore, I impulsively picked up the last they had of her book, "Falling Out of Grace: Meditations on Loss, Healing and Wisdom." (From what I've found, it is now out of print, but if you watch, you can find it on eBay).

In her book, she defines grace as the state every being strives for, living harmoniously, progressing toward the purpose we are meant for.

Somé says we must be broken, sometimes many times, before we can experience grace. And this brokenness, this falling out of grace, is a gift.

She also teaches that when we feel we have fallen out of grace, when we feel we have been broken, whatever event or person or feeling that caused it is trying to tell us something. It is in that place, that person, that feeling, that we must focus, because that thing that jolts us out of our complacency, that thing that breaks us, is where we find our true purpose, our happiness.

Maybe the thing that breaks us, that causes cracks in our vase, is the one thing that lets the light in, that opens us to where we are meant to be, even when we are blinking and teary-eyed from its brightness.

There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.

...

Every Life Needs a Direction

I am so glad I have a GPS on this journey. My Garmin has helped me explore a bit, knowing I just have to press "home" and it will guide me there. Sometimes when I'm using it, I see a sign pointing to some place I want to explore, so I take a different road. When I do this, it always says, "recalculating" and tries to tell me to turn left or turn right to get back on track to my originally programmed destination. This week, since I've been alone and quiet so much, I've started talking back to my Garmin. "Turn left" she says. "NO!" I shout. "I'm not going to!" Yes, I've been talking out loud to the Garmin.

When I started using the Garmin in December (it was an early Christmas present from Sean) I was amazed by its accuracy. At the same time, I wish it gave you affirmations throughout the journey, like:

"Turn right here. Good job!"
"Arriving at destination. You made it!"
"You're doing great!"
"You're almost there!"

It just seems to be a guide that never lets you know how you're doing - unless you miss a turn!

You can choose other voices and other languages on the Garmin, but the default one really sounds best to me. It's a pleasant female voice, even if it is pretty unemotional. The other two American English choices are very monotone and remind me of the way they portray Stephen Hawking on Family Guy or a Speak & Spell (which always had an evil sound to them, if you ask me).

So, when I've programmed a destination, but choose to explore, and the Garmin urges me to turn left and I don't, and it "recalculates" and tells me to turn again, I have to turn it off, often saying out loud, "I'm making my own way!" Of course, I can be pretty bold knowing my electronic guide is just a button push away.

I woke up this morning to a voice. It said, "Every life needs a direction." My eyes opened. It was 7:00am.

I wrote this down (because we should always listen when a voice speaks so clearly) and went back to sleep (because if you know me, you know I am not getting up at 7:00am unless I have to!). I knew this statement would be something I would ponder later.

When I was on one of the roads at the park the other day, I came to a place where the road went in two directions. I wasn't sure which way I should turn, so I just went to the right. As I came to the park exit, I saw that either direction would have led me to the same place since the road was a loop.

I've always felt this way about choices - that more often than not, whatever we choose leads us to the same place. That a choice made with the heart is never wrong, even when it might hurt later.

Most of us travel on roads that are not our own. There are road signs showing us how we "should" travel on the path. Certainly, some signs are there to keep us safe. But on the road of life, we are constantly met with signs that were placed there by rule-makers who came before us. They are things we were taught growing up that have become part of what we now believe - that we get (or don't get) what we deserve, that life is scary and painful, and feelings of shame, of guilt, of powerlessness, of fear.

All of these become the rules of our personal roads, even though we had no choice in making them. But, when we grow up and become the caretakers of our own roads, we do have choices. If you could visualize your path, your road, what would it look like? Would it be full of potholes and lined with signs? I doubt anyone would want that to be their personal road. Mine would be a gently curving path, lined with grass and trees and flowers and plants, with some shade and some sun. Of course there would be a few signs, just in case someone else was on my path, so they would know how to behave. My signs would be simple - a few arrows showing where to go, a couple of signs pointing out significant places along the way, and one rule: no hurting any living thing. This, of course, is the "ideal" path for me, not the one I really have.

When some friends were trying to sell their house, they did some work on the yard to give it curb appeal. It looked great, but one thing was bothering them - an ugly, rusty, metal "no parking" sign on their tree lawn. They had started working it back and forth to loosen it and they told me that they were going to remove it in the middle of the night. Sure enough, a few days later the sign was gone and you would never know it was there in the first place. Yes, this is probably illegal in some way. But it was their house, they had no choice where the sign would go when it was placed there, and they were just trying to make their home more beautiful. This was two years ago and no one has said a word since.

I'm not saying break the law - but when we're talking about your metaphorical road, it is YOUR road and you get to make the rules of your road. If you've ever tried to remove a road sign (ahem, not that I have) then you know the pole is deep, sometimes cemented in the ground, and requires a lot of rocking back and forth to loosen it. Some of our road signs are going to be like that - the hardest ones to remove will be the ones that say how life "should" be - how WE "should" be. These signs are rusty and old from generations of use.

Some people may not ever feel a need to remove their signs. But if you've felt negative feelings of guilt, fear, anger, bitterness - whatever sign is making you feel that, whatever "rule" you think you've broken, needs to be torn from your road. Those signs will never lead you to a place of happiness.

Listen to your voices - the images, feelings, sounds, names, songs, and faces you can't stop thinking about. Those are the places where you will forge new paths. The things that make you feel most alive are the places where your heart longs to be. The "good" feelings are your direction. And every life needs a direction.

So, grab some work gloves and a shovel and sneak out to your road. Start listening to your heart and the things you crave from life. Start making your road one you want to be on. Don't worry - your heart is your personal GPS that will always lead you home.

...

A Meaning for Melting

Another bright, sunny day! As more and more earth pokes through the ice and snow, I hear dripping and sliding from the roof. Melting.

When I feel down, depressed, low, I often equate it with feeling like I'm melting. Sliding from a solid, stable form to a puddle - shallow, dirty, small. I think I tend to see melting as something negative, a dwindling or fading away of something.

Melting is essentially the changing of forms from solid to liquid. In science, they even use the word "reduces" when referring to the change from solid to liquid. And the change always requires a catalyst. Like today, it is the sun and warm air melting the ice and snow.

I think my everyday existence is to be frozen. Solid, unmoving, and resistant of change. What freezes me into that state? Probably routine, the daily sameness, laziness, apathy, busy-ness.

I long for more liquid days, I long to be melted by the things that warm me into fluidity. My catalysts are found in giving and receiving - love, passion, music, peace, nature, light. There are far too few of these things in my life, but when I have them, I melt. I go from stagnant solid to flowing fluid, moving, pulsing, reaching, quenching.

Unlike the sun, our catalysts are rarely just given to us - they must be sought and sometimes asked for. So it's often easier to stay frozen solid and in a state of being where we are hardened to hurt. Being frozen is easier in a lot of ways. But how can we inspire if we are jaded? How can we relate with others if we are unmoving? How can truly live if we are bound up in ourselves?

By melting, we allow ourselves to be transformed into a different way of being. There is both a gentleness and a power to being liquid. Both a grace and a terror. But in liquid, there is life - there is motion. From tremendous waterfalls to ocean depths, from the drip of a melting icicle to the slow slide of a single tear. These are the places where we find beauty and inspiration.

But to be that, to do that, is to give in to the melting. To allow ourselves to take the risk of being changed even when the transformation might be, and usually is, painful. I wonder if the melting ice cries out in its final moment before it turns to water. If it does, I imagine it also feels a great sigh, the relief of releasing a tear, as it rolls on.

Sunlight is silent and sometimes we may not realize we're melting until the last frozen bit of ice is all that is left in our warming puddle. Maybe we cling to that piece, that last shard of our solid selves. Or maybe we surround it with our slowly warming waters, and all that it was - and we were - changes. Our molecules remain the same, we remain who we are. But our state of being has changed and in this new state we are capable of more - to move, to flow, and even to change again.

We may return to our icy state at times when we need to protect ourselves or when we're overwhelmed, or even when we fall back into the routines of life. But we never know when the sun will shine and melt us once again.

While I long to be liquid, I also long for the blissful moments when I am air, part of the atmosphere. To throw back our arms with abandon and breathe out until our entire being is exhaled and we are able to expand as far as we allow ourselves, weaving in and out of one another until we barely recognize ourselves, or each other. It is in those moments that we feel most connected with ourselves and the universe, and those moments are rare.

Which is why so much has been written about such things - finding our bliss, our nirvana, our purpose. What if our purpose is ever-changing? What if there are times when we are meant to be solid, when what is habitual for us enables the routines of the universe?

There will be times when we need to melt, to quench our parched and withered roots, curled and cracking from so much winter. And to sate the thirsts of others, to prepare their dry earth for seeds of their own.

When we find a place where the liquid of ourselves perfectly fills the fracture in another, or the dry riverbed of a need, that is when we exhale. And it is like finally releasing our breath after holding it to a point of pain.

It is the ecstasy of release where we linger until we are gathered up to begin the cycle again, collecting us as a cloud and falling as a gentle rain or soft frozen snow.

...

Flight

This morning, the sun is shining again. It is about 40 degrees already and the world here is melting. I watched the birds for a while - well, I heard them more than saw them. They were chirping and chattering over a small hill where I couldn't see them, and their little heads popped up once in a while. It sounded like there were many, maybe 50, and one I saw was a robin. It got me thinking about flight.

When we think about flight as a metaphor, at least for me, it's something beautiful. It is freedom and letting go, being inspired and taking wing, taking off to the sky only when blissful and free.
For the birds I just saw, flying was about fear. Something startled them, a larger, more dominant bird of prey, a small hawk I saw settle into a tree. We envy that birds have the ability to take to the air, to leave all the dangers of the earth and soar.

What makes us fly?

What if, like the birds, the thing that makes us fly is fear? What if we only soar when something invades our comfort zone, forcing us to seek immediate safety? Baby birds often only learn to fly when pushed from the nest. Have I pushed myself from the nest? Have I flown in search of safety?

In some ways, I guess I have. But I also wonder if I've flown to a different kind of place - just as frightening - where I am forced to be alone with myself and confront the scariest thing of all - ME.

I pushed myself from the nest. I startled myself into flying. I was frightened by the darkness, the deep downward spiral of self-loathing. When I saw myself react out of fear, I had regret. And those times seemed to become more frequent, so that I was moody, unable to react with clarity. Flying... with no place to land.

A spiritual healer I saw several times in Arizona once told me that we all react out of either fear or love. Sometimes pain causes us to respond in fear. And that often makes us feel more pain, more fear, and inflict that upon others.

She shared the example of walking in the woods with her dog. The dog stepped in a bear trap and his leg was caught. When she rushed to help, he turned on her, growling and snapping. Looking back, she knows her dog loves and trusts her - but he was reacting out of fear and pain.

Where are my bear traps? In the times I've snapped and snarled, what was the fear behind it that kept me from a reaction of love and clarity?

I've learned to see people who are angry, hurtful to others, bitter, and all-around negative as broken people. This realization has helped me to look at people whose actions I don't understand with compassion rather than hatred. For people who have let their brokenness define them, I wonder what broke them? What shattered them into so much confusion that every human interaction they have is dysfunctional? My heart aches for their brokenness - and in that change from disgust to compassion, I move from fear to love.

I think about people in other lands who have been broken by injustice, circumstance, disaster, or systems of power that rely on hurt and fear. And the citizens who suffer, aren't they human like me? I have been broken by suffering and hurt - but I am also surrounded by systems and people to heal me. I wonder at the desperation one must feel to think that a suicide bomb is the answer. How desperate, how deep the hurt, how profound the fear, to think that is the only way.

I guess it's human nature to seek revenge when one is wronged. And sometimes, like the dog caught in the the bear trap, we lash out and hurt those we love the most, because the fear and pain are so immediate.

I have hope for this world and my life - but it is because I live in a place where systems exist to heal, and I am blessed by people in my life and heart who love unconditionally.

In observing healthy relationships, I've learned that each must be whole as individuals before being whole as a couple, a family, a community. And we can't force others to be whole, but must work on our own wholeness and provide opportunities for others to find theirs.

This is not to say any of us are ever really whole. But how can we expect to have healthy relationships without being healthy individuals?

It is in the times of fear and flight that we come alive, and times of darkness are sometimes the push we need to renew our spirits. What frightens us, what breaks us, are sometimes what we need to learn who we really are.

Like birds, sometimes fear makes us take flight - and our fear is increased as our wings get tired and we don't see a safe place to land.

The blessing for me? Everywhere I look, I see branches.

...