got happy?

it's kinda funny. so many billions of dollars are spent every year on that eternal and elusive quest for happiness, for triumph over the human condition. how many of us ever find it?

there are so many things to be out there: frustrated, happy, in love, dejected, angry, petrified, ecstatic, envious, peaceful...

do you know exactly how many adjectives exist in the english language to describe the myriad emotions a human being is capable of experiencing? when you find out, let me know, 'kay?

macrina wiederkehr said, "we live in a world of theophanies. holiness comes wrapped around the ordinary. there are burning bushes all around you. every tree is full of angels. hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb. life wants to lead you from crumbs to angels, but this can happen only if you are willing to unwrap the ordinary by staying with it long enough to harvest its treasure."

on the other hand, daniel gilbert says, "when we have an experience --hearing a particular sonata, making love with a particular person, watching the sun set from a particular window of a particular room-- on successive occasions, we quickly begin to adapt to it, and the experience yields less pleasure each time. psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage." (stumbling on happiness, pg. 130)

well, who is correct? the picture i posted claims to know the answer, but also tells you that your eyesight is too faulty to see it, even though it's written there plain as day for anyone to read.

anyone who's not blind as a bat, anyway.

honestly, my money's on macrina. as soon as i read the quote, i thought of mr. gilbert's quote from his book. i mean, the audacity of such cynicism! what have we stated before here at iGoddess???

cynicism is NOT insight! sticking feathers up your butt does NOT make you a chicken!

of course, how many people is he going to reach with that whole "the rest of us call it marriage" crap? a lot, i'm guessing, because a lot of people get dragged into the monotony of everyday life and think that, because they're in a rut, life is a drudge. marriage can be a huge trap, i'll admit. i fell into it myself, and i fell into it far too young. once upon a time i even went to my bio-dad for advice. do you know what he told me?

in a nutshell, he told me to shut up, be a good wife, and take it.

i'm thinking he felt just as trapped by "habituation" as so many other people do. i can only feel sadness for him. my bio-mother told me to my face she regrets her decisions. she even regrets her children; she feels she never should have had any of us. my bio-father admitted the same thing to me, more than once. i call that a terminal case of declining marginal utility if ever there was one. i could never imagine looking li'l *c* in his eyes --my eyes-- and telling him i regret having him. if anything, he's my salvation. the one thing i've done right in my life, and he'll be ward of the earth after i'm gone.

the things i do here today --pronoia, manifesting the Funk, getting healthy, finding happiness, putting on my combat boots and bandolier and being a revolutionary freedom fighter-- is to make the world that much more of a better place.

happiness isn't elusive. it isn't habituation. it doesn't lessen with every single day, desensitizing us to all its wonderous gifts the more we're exposed to them. there is no saturation point with happiness! if anything, it's like our brains and our bodies: the more we use them, the stronger they grow. the more happiness we create and send out, the more comes back to us. the larger our capacity to hold it grows until we feel we should explode in a coruscating flash of blinding, orgasmic bliss.

of course, we're always looking for happiness, and that is our mistake. we're using our eyeballs, and our hearts are set on distant horizons. we should be looking into more mirrors, looking inside. and if we're not finding happiness in there, we should be creating it. getting more sleep, eating better, throwing out the clutter that's blocking the hallway. get out. get moving.

breathe.

call up a friend and go see a movie, or go out to try that little indian hole in the wall down on sw morrison you've been meaning to try. take scuba lessons! give yourself permission to eat that piece of chocolate cake you keep saying your hips won't forgive you for! drink more water. find something that makes you laugh and try it! run around with your knickers on your head. make a bunch of picnic food and take the kids to the park, and screw mowing the lawn and folding laundry. find a new job...y'know, one that makes you happy and sparks your interest. take a salsa class.

just...find something, and DO IT. no, no...shut up and just freakin' do it! stop it with the excuses. you're just as tired of hearing them as i am. what are you afraid of? you're honestly telling me you're afraid of happiness? WTF?

when did we become a society that makes excuses to avoid happiness?!!?! i find something seriously wrong with that. equaly wrong is the culture that totes cynicism and the rat race as the pinnacles of "advanced" society. just how evolved are we supposed to be, anyway? too evolved to create happiness within ourselves? i guarantee the return is vastly more impressive than the best stock investments.

i know what the last line of that picture says, by the way. you wanna know? it says:

Y O U R S E L F

(no, really, it does. you can even count the letters.)

miracle concentrate, remember? a pound of honey, a pound of saffron, make love once. miracles in the mundane. bring it on, babe. give me the mundane, and i'll show you my happiness can make one basket of fish feed five thousand, too. life is nothing but the little things, the mundane and ordinary. the Divine Funk created it all...so isn't it all miraculous?

ha! take that, mr. gilbert...