THE SECRET TO HAPPINESS (October 18, 2008)
I have discovered the secret to happiness - at long last. It has been in front of me for quite some time and I never saw it; I mean really saw it. I have heard others suggest it on countless occasions, but it never quite latched on. I have even said it myself with the same result. It never registered. But lately it has. What I am referring to, many will have no taste for, especially in America, the land of big egos and consumption. I will no doubt be reviled and ridiculed by the crass corporate types and the rest of the mediocre mainstream for what I am about to suggest, but that is irrelevant. As a matter of fact, I think I would be a little put off if they did not so castigate me, and look down their noses at what I have to say. As a form of prelude, I would like to offer an example of what the secret is like. I once heard a story (very likely apocryphal) about an elephant that had been trained to be restrained by a piece of string tied around its leg. Such a large animal can of course break such a piece of string without so much as thinking about it. But the elephant did not know this. It lacked the capacity to realize, and realization (as Alan Watts once suggested) is a form of salvation. If the elephant had commanded the power to realize, it would have, at the same instant, also commanded the power to free itself (to save itself). The secret to happiness is very similar. If you have the power to realize what you must do, you have the power to become happy. So the question is, "What exactly is it that you must realize?" The answer: that you are nothing. If you believe that you are something, as we are all taught in school when we are virtually preached to about how special we are, then you grasp an abstraction that can easily become a heavy weight. Something requires maintenance. Nothing requires nothing. I consider myself a street philosopher and consequently will not hesitate to use street language to stress my ideas. (There are several essays at this site that touch on this idea, like Offensive Words and F-Word.) So let me put it in street language. The sooner you learn to get over yourself, and realize that's you're basically a piece of dogshit, the sooner will you be able to embrace that ever-popular ideal called happiness. Now of course I use the term dogshit as a metaphor. It essentially suggests worthlessness, as in the popular phrase, "worthless piece of dogshit." We place far too much value on ourselves in America. If you pay close attention, you can't help but notice eventually that everyone in this country seems to be suffering from the same malady, an inflated sense of their own self worth. If you truly think that you are worth something, then you are going to suffer for it. The feeling of worthiness is a heavy load to carry around. Somehow, the idea of burdens does not balance with happiness. And I can think of no bigger burden than that of you own self. As I said, what I am suggesting is not an easy task. And in America it would most certainly be considered a task. The average person, upon hearing something like this, would more than likely just scoff at it and reply with something like, "Oh, that's just a bunch of bullshit." It is difficult to resist our social programming. But it is that very programming that is making us unhappy. That programming has conditioned us to believe that we are a significant something, that we deserve certain considerations and/or rights. As a result of believing what we have been taught, we have also, at the same moment, taken up a bag of rocks to carry around with us wherever we may happen to go. The truly happy ones in this world are those who travel the lightest. It is with good reason that such people are called enlightened. And never ever forget that the only way to become truly enlightened is to realize (there's that word again) that there is no such thing as enlightenment.
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