Micro and Macro Happiness

The disciplines I've been checking out, Buddhism and yoga, focus a lot on inner happiness, and disciplining oneself to regulate the fluctuations of the mind so that we aren't all slaves to our fidgeting brains and insecurities and egos. This stuff is pretty great, and I really like it, but let's think about external reality for a minute.

I once chided my friend for moving across the country to make a change in her life, telling her, essentially, wherever you go, there you are. In general, I believe this - why run when the sickness is inside you? When she moved, my friend identified for me many many tangible external realities that affected her inner world, demonstrating that her location did have meaningful impact on her "self." And I also believe this is true. For example, I know that access to nature noticeably improves my sense of well-being. I feel great that I have a nutty, loving spouse. I absolutely must have A Room of My Own in order to sustain my happiness. Stressful and sedentary work makes me suicidal - I don't care how hard I work at my mental equanimity and inner peace, I can't have an office job.

But isn't the purpose of disciplining our minds to protect our happiness from the endless unpredictable and uncontrollable circumstances of life? I might not be able to live somewhere with easy, daily access to nature. My spouse could decide to leave at any second. I might need to take an office job to survive. I might not be able to afford a room of my own or it might have to be sacrificed to other life exigencies. Shouldn't I be able to maintain a happy state of mind no matter what? Isn't that the point of what I'm working on?

I don't think so. Feminist reading has been pretty provocative for me these days. I'm pretty sympathetic to counter-cultural approaches to existence - in a full-blooded American way, too - the Declaration of Independence after all is premised on the idea that when a way of life no longer works for people, their natural human right is to change it from the top down and just start over. But there are so many forces that we are mired in that we may not realize are congesting our human potential for happiness and self-realization. I wrote recently (a few post ago) about feeling oppressed by the feeling of being the "dinner-maker" in my feminine, nuclear familial role, and how I do it to myself, and how ingrained the dinner-maker role and identity are within me, and yet how limiting and stressful it is, too.

Changing these ingrained parts of myself is a multi-step process. Here are some ideas I have about identifying and changing basic things about life, off the top of my head:

1) realize that something about it is making me unhappy. This is easier said than done. I don't think we're very in tune with what is actually affecting our moods and health. There are a lot of veils in the way that don't point us to things that are right in front of us. Hey-o, yoga and meditation are great for tuning in on these issues and sensitizing yourself to the impact of your daily reality on your Self.

2) figure out what is making me unhappy about it. What is it? The amount of time? The expectation? Lack of reciprocation? The lighting, the smell? What is making me unhappy about a particular activity? Do not underestimate the power of just stopping the activity. Don't automatically blame yourself or your "attitude" for your discontent, a la, "I just have to adjust my expectations/approach/outlook."

3) imagine a version of the activity that brings more happiness. What has changed? Is it in my head, the atmosphere, or outside of myself?

4) imagine not doing this activity anymore. How does it affect life FOR ME, not for anyone else (ie, disappointing or angering someone is NOT a good reason to keep doing something that is not contributing to your well-being)? This helps me figure out if I am doing something out of obligation, or role-assumption, or a sense of being beholden to some situation or person. (Germaine Greer observes that all too frequently, "Women are self-sacrificing in direct proportion to their incapacity to offer anything but this sacrifice." Ladies, keep an eye on your own martyrdom as a way of substituting identity and meaningful work - I definitely do this.)

5) be completely okay with a version of life that unfolds without trying to keep the old activity as part of it.

Okay so that's just thinking about it right now, any additional ideas about perspective and analysis are extra-welcome.

At the moment I am most troubled by the prospect of a future life built around the structure of the nuclear family. It sucks. It is isolated and inefficient: no one should be alone with the same five people most of the time, all up in their business, and there is no reason each tiny family bungalow needs its own lawn mower and washing machine - nuclear isolation is good for corporations, by the way, but that's another rant for later (yes, Greer is all about this, too). And the limited universe of the nuclear family doesn't help social progress, either, but that's good for the moneyed classes, too. Greer says it thusly: "[T]he function of the patriarchal family unit in capitalist society" is that it "immobilizes the worker, keeps him vulnerable, so that he can be tantalized with the vision of security. It gives him a controllable pattern of consumption to which he is thoroughly committed. His commitment is to his small family and his employer not to his community."

My role as a woman in the nuclear scenario is not okay with me. I don't want to be a dinner-maker, not just on principle, but because the reality of it is soul-sucking. So this is one of those assumed role things that I'm trying to picture for myself - I want inner happiness no matter what, yes, but creating my own mental reality is just the micro version of manifesting a truly sincere, macro, outer reality of happiness.

I have to be careful about this stuff, though - can't just run around rejecting responsibilities out of liberated self-realization.

Rewarductivity

The opposite of salty is . . . potato. I know the opposite of salty is supposed to be sweet, but opposite is such a slippery idea. Potatoes are the anti-salt, you put a potato in your soup if it's too salty and it'll soak it up. Sweet is the opposing sensation to salty, and actually I really like things that are both salty and sweet, so I think their opposition is nicely complementary. Hm, just like salt complements potatoes.

Well whatever, that's going nowhere - anyway, the point here is about time-wasting. I don't like to feel like I'm wasting my time - I would like to do the opposite of waste my time - and the first term that comes to mind is to be productive. Productivity is the first opposite of time-wasting.

Feeling productive makes me feel happy. It makes me feel like I am using my time on the planet responsibly. Lots of people have lots of little auxiliary responsibilities that they can always be plugging away at, like the garden, or their house, or pets, or whatever. I think it's about having some kind of forum for directed effort in the down time so that the days don't go to waste. Lately I am enjoying practicing the guitar in my otherwise unoccupied time. My long term goal is to become Angus Young. This definitely makes me feel I am not wasting my life.

So what does productivity mean? When I think of something productive, I think of something with measurable gain attached to it. Like fewer weeds in the garden, a walked and fed pet, an at-last-finished kitchen sideboard. And on the other side would be things that are clearly not productive, like tv watching, pacing the house while avoiding doing the dishes, sitting in gridlock for two hours. Usually no measurable gain comes out of time spent this way.

But I can feel extremely productive without having anything to show for it, too, so I'm not sure measurable gain is what I mean by productivity. Yesterday I went for a big old hike up Ashokan High Point near Boiceville. The weather was great, and it was very pretty, and the views at the top of the hike were super duper. The hike was more than I bargained for physically, so at the top of the hike I rested in the sun, ate my snack, did my meditation for the day, and let my sweaty clothes dry out before heading back down the trail. Eventually a German tourist couple came along and we chit-chatted ("The area is very lonely with companies, yes? What is the economy here, where are you have a job? Do you use the Google for your travels?") and scouted out other views together, and it was all very nice. I have no feeling that this was wasted time, nor do I have anything really to show for it progress-wise (except maybe exerting myself helps get me into shape and is good for my health etc, oh, well maybe reaching the top of the hike could be the productivity, but whatever). So I think what I mean by "productive" is actually "rewarding," in that I want to spend my time doing things that are rewarding, and these things are inherently productive (ie the opposite of wasteful). It's just that what is usually rewarding to us is something with a measurable gain. But seeing the scenery was rewarding, and so was reaching the top of the hike, sitting in solitude in the sunshine, and meeting nice people.

I was thinking about this as I got back in the car and realized my hike had taken up over 7 and a half hours of the day. 50 minutes there, 50 minutes back, and I spent a total of 6 hours hiking and hanging out. I didn't even realize the time was gone by except that I was getting really hungry. And then I started to wonder if I would get enough "done" with the rest of the day and be sufficiently productive. The short answer is no, I didn't get what I usually consider to be "enough" done once I got back and had some dinner and assessed how tired I was. But I didn't feel terrible about losing or wasting time, or failing to make progress on other things. The day had been rewarding enough not to have to be productive in the usual sense.

Yes, rewarding is the new standard term for responsible time-spending, not productivity. Rewarding is the second, and I think better, opposite of wasteful.