by David Cook
posted November 22, 2005
 David Cook |
“To acquire happiness you don't have to do anything, because happiness cannot be acquired.’’
The holidays have now arrived, waiting like an unopened package at our doorstep. Greeting cards and Sunday night snowflake movies tell us that the holidays are, or should be, times of thanksgiving, laughter and family gatherings, and in many ways, that is true. The treasure we seek during the holidays is happiness, and we look for it in many different places _ from friends and family, feasting and films, sleeping late and shopping early, Jack Daniels and Jack Frost.
And those things are delicious in many ways. Yet according to DeMello, they only serve as icing on the cake _ nothing more, nothing less. And the surprise is that this cake is already within our grasp, waiting to be embraced, already in our mouths, waiting to be swallowed, already in our stomach, waiting to be digested. Listen to him once again:
“To acquire happiness you don't have to do anything, because happiness cannot be acquired. Does anybody know why? Because we have it already.’’
This is the secret truth of our lives _ this happiness that we search for, pay for, eat for, work for, is already ours. The pearl of great price is already in our pocket. But since we don’t realize this, this pearl is stolen from us, each day, by a thousand tiny thieves. These thieves are called illusions, and DeMello, in his talk “The Most Important Minutes In Your Life,’’ says that it is our illusions from which we must awake.
“Being president of a corporation has nothing to do with being a success in life. Having a lot of money has nothing to do with being a success in life. You're a success in life when you wake up! Then you don't have to apologize to anyone, you don't have to explain anything to anyone, you don't give a damn what anybody thinks about you or what anybody says about you. You have no worries; you're happy. That's what I call being a success.’’
These thieves that steal our happiness are born out of the place inside us that cares about what others think. The place that wants to climb the ladder of success. The place that seeks the shinier car, bigger home, the slicker shoes. That place is a slippery slope dependent on other people’s admiration of us. We live in the illusion that things outside of ourselves determine the state of our happiness.
And it is understandable why we behave this way. We are taught this, day in and day out, from our society. Consider the man who climbs the ladder, yet never meditates on why he is climbing at all.
“All he's really worried about is what his children will think about him, what the neighbors will think about him, what his wife will think about him… Our society and culture drill that into our heads day and night. People who made it! Made what?! Made asses of themselves. Because they drained all their energy getting something that was worthless. They're frightened and confused, they are puppets like the rest... They don't enjoy life. They are constantly tense and anxious. Do you call that human? And do you know why that happens? Only one reason: They identified with some label. They identified the "I" with their money or their job or their profession. That was their error.’’
We must shake off our labels, which we wear like straight-jackets in this world of ours. Shake them off, and curse the idea that your bank account, your television set, the number of compliments you receive, the cost or color of the noose-like tie around your neck are things that matter. True happiness comes when these things fall from us like worn-out clothes, worn-out skin, cast aside.
This is not easy work. For some of us, it becomes the hardest work of our lives, as it demands an internal revolution from the kings of our ego. And those kings have been in place for a long time, and are hard to topple. But when they fall, our lives taste sweeter than ever before. For the truth has set us free.
In the words of the poet ee cummings: “To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”
Hear the story of American writer Sherwood Anderson, who began his own revolution one November many years ago.
At age 36, Anderson had become, somehow, the owner and manager of an Ohio paint factory. In his heart, Anderson is a writer, a poet, an artist, yet at this moment, in the fall of 1912, he looks down, far at the ground below, and realizes he is halfway up a ladder he no longer wishes to climb. And one day, he jumps off. (The story is told in the November 2004 issue of “Harper’s” by Mark Slouka, whose article “Quitting the Paint Factory’’ should be standard reading for all Americans http://web.ionsys.com/~remedy/Quitting%20The%20Paint%20Factory.htm).
“He was on his way, as they say, a businessman in the making, per-haps
even a tycoon in embryo. There was only one problem: he couldn't seem to shake the notion that the work he was doing (writing circulars extolling the virtues of his line of paints) was patently absurd, undignified; that it amounted to a kind of prison sentence…Eventually he snapped…
“On November 27, 1912, in the middle of dictating a letter to his secretary ("The goods about which you have inquired are the best of their kind made in the..."), he simply stopped. According to the story, the two supposedly stared at each other for a long time, after which Anderson said: "I have been wading in a long river and my feet are wet," and walked out. Outside the building he turned east toward Cleveland and kept going. Four days later he was recognized and taken to a hospital suffering from exhaustion.’’
Exhausted from his life of lies, Anderson revolts, and walks away from it all, out of (or perhaps into) “the long river.’’ He quits the paint factory, and goes on to write masterful American literature. Later, he calls on other Americans to revolt themselves, to “agree to quit working, to loaf, to refuse to be hurried or try to get on in the world."
Or simply, to begin to find themselves, and along the way, true happiness. I have often wondered how DeMello, our Jesuit priest, would celebrate Thanksgiving Day. Perhaps, after writing this, I may know the answer.
Knocking on your door, DeMello would bring nothing to the dinner except his large smile and his heart’s knapsack of stories. And I would imagine that DeMello, sitting down at your dining room table with a smile, would run his hand across the deep grains of wood in your table. He would look you in the eye as he spoke, or as he listened. He would feel the weight of the fork in his hand, see the sunlight coming through the glass window, taste the scent of cranberry and red wine in the air. He would savor bite by bite, sip by sip, conversation by conversation. He would notice the fire as it crackled and popped. He would pay attention to the feel of the warm sweater on his skin. He would slowly chew his food and thoughtfully break the bread with his hands. He would truly laugh. He would truly hug.
Watching DeMello at Thanksgiving would be like watching a poet, or a ballet dancer, or the master of the orchestra, or, perhaps most fitting, a heart surgeon at work. DeMello’s passion was life, and because he was free from everything that held him down, he was free to love life, and love those in his life.
At the Thanksgiving dinner table, the priest would offer a prayer of thanks for the one single thing that any of us can ever be thankful for: the present moment. This one moment, right now, is all we have.
And when we awake to the deep truth of that, we find happiness. And happiness smiles back, for it is thankful. Happiness, you see, is like an old friend, and has been waiting all the days of our lives for us to finally come home.
To our true selves.
(David Cook is a former journalist for the Chattanooga Times-Free Press. He currently teaches American history at Girls Preparatory School and can be reached at dcook7@gmail.com)
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