The Lost Keys to Happiness

Back when I was in college (now some twenty five years ago) it was a running joke with my roommate how often I found myself frantically searching my side of the room for my keys, or how often I'd come running back into the room some five minutes after leaving for class, having realized I had left my keys behind. I accepted the jibes, at least after I found the truant keys, but to my memory, never once in all my four years as a student--never once!--did I sit down to consider just what such a habit of misplacement and forgetfulness might mean. About the unwarranted busyness of my hours. About the unquiet in my mind. 

I mark it down as an improvement that these days I lose track of my keys only rarely. Nevertheless, it does happen; and when it does, I still find myself pretty dependably reluctant to draw any conclusions about the event beyond the moment. “General?” I say. “Say anything general about my life? No no, it was just a temporary lapse; just gravity acting at the wrong time, making me drop them. It was that stupid local advertising flyer okay? I laid it down over my key ring and fob, which made me accidentally lose sight of them!” And of course there's no need to fixate on literal keys alone. Missed appointments are lost keys. Fits of temper are lost keys. Tears of stress are lost keys. 

There is a hermetic proverb that declares that the everyday realities of our daily life mirror and refer to a larger macrocosmic order. The proverb goes: “As above, so below.” And we might just as easily alter the proverb and say, “As in your outer life, so within.” “Look at your life,” we ought to say to ourselves more often. “Take its events into your heart for purposes of reflection and diagnosis." When stress rules our lives; when schedules are so crowded they feel like ferries about to capsize; when necessary objects such as keys go AWOL on a regular basis--what does all this suggest about our inner lives? A lack of the food for reflection perhaps? A disconnection from the sources of sanity? A poorly meditated set of values? A dearth of music, deeply heard, or of other forms of beauty? 

Just the other day, I ran across a sixteenth century poem by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, called “The Means to attain Happy Life:” which I think might just as easily be called “The Keys to the Happy Life,” or even “The Lost Keys to the Happy Life.” It begins:

Martial, the things that do attain
The happy life be these, I find:
The richesse left, not got with pain,
The fruitful ground, the quiet mind.... 

I like it that the poem is addressed to someone called “Martial,” which of course, suggests someone used to fighting. Someone given to solving trouble with discipline, organization, order, and machines that multiply your strength. Is Martial the sort of person we're trying to be--as soldiers of the schedule? As the prize-fighters of career ambition? As faceless troopers marching to the beat of universal consumption and a narrowly defined prosperity? 

Yet look at the advice the poem offers!  “Don't work so hard for happiness,” it says, “Don't try to force it. Trust to the fruitful ground. To the quiet mind. Trust the riches that come to you free more than the riches that cost so much in spirit to attain."

The poem runs beautifully on:

The equal friend, no grudge, no strife.
No charge of rule, nor governance,
Without disease, the healthful life,
The household of continuance.

The mean diet, no delicate fare;
True wisdom join'd with simpleness;
The night discharged of all care,
Where wine the wit may not oppress. 

The faithful wife, without debate;
Such sleeps as may beguile the night:
Contented with thine own estate
Ne wish for death, ne fear his might.

I wont' try to paraphrase it all. It's clear enough isn't it, that here was a man who, despite the privileges that might have blinded him, (privileges, let's admit it, of wealth and rank that he enjoyed as an earl), understood that true happiness depends not so much on what one can count and control, but on gifts beyond the individual's immediate power to invoke or even precisely define--friendship, human love, intimate social interaction, the ability of food to nourish us, a decent night's rest: none of these, NONE, can be forced into being, or bought, but rather must be accepted as gifts when they arrive, and then tended like a pleasant fire within a general atmosphere of generosity, gratefulness, freedom, common sense, conviviality, and trust.

Now. If such gifts as Henry Howard enumerates truly are the keys to the happy life, how have we lost them?

• We have lost them by lack of reflection.
• We have lost them by asking too much of ourselves in some dimensions, and not enough in others.
• We have lost them by asking too much of the planet.
• We have lost them by forgetting the word "enough."
• We have lost them by taking for our own exclusive use what ought in fairness to belong to others as well. 
• We have lost them.
• We have lost them by losing track in our vocations of what makes us personally passionate. We have followed money instead of our hearts.   
• We have lost them by neglecting our families.
• We have lost them in the noise and the glare of electronic distraction. 
• We have lost them. 
• We have lost them by thinking of time as a means to an end (such as making money) and not as pure gift.
• We have lost them by neglecting to cultivate our inner lives with the beauty of art and with the ordinary warmth of the outdoor sun.
• We have lost them in the belief that everything that we humans make for ourselves at great expense is an improvement on what nature gives us for free.
• We have lost them in the foolish belief that power trumps beauty. That speed trumps meditation. That efficiency trumps happiness. 
• We have lost them.  

Time to consider how to get them back. Time to seek a different way. 

HB

The Young Man and The Flute

Once there was a young man who left home in search of a way to make his mark on the world. One day in his journeying he came to a forest, where he heard the sound of a flute. It was such a beautiful sound that he entered the forest in search of it. 

But the sound came from deeper in the forest than he had guessed. Even after several hours of his pursuing it, it still sounded in the distance, and then not at all. It grew dark. The young man took shelter in the hollow of a large tree and the next morning sought a way out of the forest. About mid-morning he heard the flute again, but he did not go in search of it. Instead he cursed it for leading him astray. "Perhaps," he thought, "it will even prove to have led me to my death."

But that afternoon he stumbled upon a stream where a bearded old man sat playing a wooden flute, making the sparkles on the water scatter and dance in intricate patterns according to the melodies he played. As the young man listened and watched, he was overcome with a desire to learn the same skill. He went up to the old man and begged to be taught. 

"Ah, it's not what you think," the old man said. But the young man persisted and at length convinced the old man to take him on as a pupil.

So the young man stayed and learned the secrets of the flute. He learned the melodies to summon starlight and to make it fringe the pine boughs, and the melodies to make moonlight fall in soft rustles of light as if it were a lovely woman letting down her golden hair. Sunlight, the young man discovered, was more difficult--like untamed, flashing horses. Yet eventually he could braid bits and bridles of light and set those steeds galloping across the sky, right and left above the forest floor.

Then one day the old man said, "I will take you back to the road. You have learned everything you can from me, and the flute is yours." So the young man followed his master out to the forest's edge, and, after thanking the old man, set out for the nearest town. He dreamed of his new power. With it, he thought, he would find love, gain fame, maybe even become a great king.

That evening at an inn, the young man decided he would make a start on his dreams. It had been raining for days, and the firewood was soaked, so that in the great hall of the inn, the fire smoldered dismally. The young man bet the innkeeper and all those gathered at the tables in the hall that he could make the fire burn brighter, without touching it or even blowing on it. 

"And how will you manage this?" asked the innkeeper.

"With a melody from this," said the young man, drawing out his flute. Laughter burst out on all sides and the innkeeper and everyone in the hall gladly accepted the grounds of the bet, as the young man put the flute to his lips. 

The melody he played was lovely, high and shimmering, but soon it was drowned out by laughter, because to the young man's surprise and consternation, no matter how he played the firelight burned no differently: no brighter or warmer or friendlier or cleaner. He stopped playing and stared at the flute in astonishment. But no, it was the same flute; you could tell by the beautiful inscriptions in the wood and the unmistakable tones it had produced. The young man put the flute away, paid the innkeeper and the patrons the money he had bet (it was all the money he had), and hurriedly left the inn.

For days he wandered, despairing that the flute had lost its power. He would take the flute out in some isolated spot and play, hoping against hope. But still, nothing: no starlight resting on the pine boughs, no sunlight willing to be tamed. He thought of turning back and entering the forest again, but he sensed he would not find the old man there.

Since he had no more money, he was forced to play on the streets of the towns he wandered through, and to put his hat out in front of him on the road for whatever people would give him. All who heard him play were amazed at the loveliness of the flute's tone and at the beauty of the melodies he played, and he earned enough to keep himself clothed and fed. But the young man hardly heard his own music, because it no longer gave him the power he had dreamed of using. In fact, it so depressed him to keep playing that one day he decided to rid himself of the instrument and with it, his misfortunes. He went to a bridge over a deep river and held the flute above the moving water. 

Just then an old blind man tapping his stick along the surface of the road, arrived at the bridge. He stopped and begged the young man for alms.

The young man turned from viewing the water. "I have nothing, old man," he said, "but a few pennies that I must keep, and this miserable flute that I am about to throw into the water."

"Play to me then," said the old man, "Before you let it go. I love to hear music."

The young man sighed. It would do no harm to play for the beggar. And, he thought, since it was to be the last time he played the instrument, he would play it well. So he played the loveliest tune he knew, a tune that in his days in the forest, had made the meteors run in streaks down heaven. He played so beautifully, that the old man, listening, wept. 

"Once," said the young man, "this flute was magical."

"Ah" replied the old man, as he moved along, "if only you could see."

The sound of the blind man's tapping grew dim; the young man was overcome with remorse. He suddenly understood that all his foolish wishes to become great in the world's eyes meant nothing, for what could be more meaningful than what had just passed between him and the beggar? He repented of his wish to destroy the flute and from that day forward played it gladly. And although the flute had a strange way of keeping itself a secret--the young man never became famous, and when he died, the flute was lost--it was said that near the end, he could make even the most hard-hearted miser weep with it, the most miserable orphan smile. 

And sometimes when he played (people said) the smallest, loveliest things would happen: the shoe on a horse would unexpectedly flash, or a water drop splashed from a pail would throw a bright, momentary rainbow before it fell to the dust.

HB



 

The Long Honest Road Home

This was back in the '90's, probably something like '94, and my wife and I had just bought a late-model used car, and one afternoon I took it out for a drive, an actual drive, which is to say, I had no destination in mind, but just thought I'd drive out into the country to enjoy the scenery and pass the time.

It turned out to be a gorgeous October day in Southern Wisconsin. The leaves were in their red-gold Autumn glory, and the mid-afternoon sun exuded that mellow Fall light you just can't get enough of, once you get a taste for it: honey on the sweet-tooth of your mind. The highway was smooth and straight. The farms I passed were neat and trim: rectangular fields and winsome barns. I slipped a CD into the car stereo. Beautiful music poured forth. Where in God's name was I? Heaven?

There is no doubt in my mind that even a generation from now, my experience of that afternoon will seem as far away to most people as the Columbia exhibition of 1893 is to us today: an image out of paradise, a thing to behold in photographs and sigh, a beautiful bygone thrill. But agree with me on that point or not, it's the autobiographical reality I want to reflect on here. Because a week or two after this drive I wrote to a friend about the experience, which apparently was tinged with an disquieting sense of prophecy. I wrote:

I was suddenly overwhelmed with a sort of imposed certainty of blessing. Almost as if it was a doom of mine never to truly suffer. I would, I thought, have bright and well-adjusted children, a life-long love in my wife, a comfortable suburban home, sufficient income....I would be published, win some prizes, and be asked to speak at writers' conventions....

Doesn't sound so bad, does it? But so then, why did I never take another drive in the country, ever again?

I can tell you why. The drive and the thoughts that came with it left me feeling empty and disappointed: Is this all there is going to be to my life? Fluent success? Effortless well-being? Trouble-free transference-to-me of suburban plenty? A life more-or-less equal in effort to this car ride--where all I have to do is turn this wheel a few degrees this way or that, and press a little on the gas and this beautiful afternoon is all mine for the taking?

It's a consistent topic of conversation here at Sunnyside, why it is that so many people seem so interested these days in watching films and in reading books that are set in post-apocalyptic futures. And we Sunnysiders have concluded that it comes from the culture being bored, bored sick and silly. We ache for a quest. We want to prove ourselves worthy of something more than the commute and a job in retail or whatever else it is that isn't really working for us in terms of character development and soul. That's all. That's it. And when we don't find those opportunities in what we call real life, we turn to living them vicariously. Thus the post-apocalyptic books and shows.  

But there is a better way than b-rate movies and books to become true adventurers and valiant warriors. The quest to do so is outlined here at 9-Volt Nomad. Our dragons are Mindlessness and Consumption. Our steeds are bicycles. Our battlegrounds are vegetable gardens; our weapons, mead-pots and potato ricers. And by the way we like to refer to nine volts here, because we aim to do with a very little bit of energy, what others might think you'd need a whole lot of energy to accomplish (9-volt nomads seek to dry their clothes in the sun for instance, which actually takes no earthly energy at all). Also we call ourselves nomads because we aspire always to be perceptually and imaginatively on the move, even if the place toward which we're journeying is always (paradoxically) exactly where we are. This is to say, our destination is simple satisfaction with the here and now, and on the lowest carbon budget possible.

So, now I'm forty-five years old instead of twenty-five, and here I am, not speaking for fees at any big writers' conventions but writing as best I can for a blog about 1800 square feet called Sunnyside. Though to be honest I doubt I'll ever fully arrive here. That's the adventure, always finding this place! Always aiming to deepen it as a venue of sensual adventure and of intellectual production and of communitarian insight and practical expertise! 

I note that since my arrival here at least one (very local) apocalypse has passed harmlessly; it was that prefabricated automotive lifestyle we Sunnysiders have left behind us, and from which we no longer expect to receive satisfaction. I note too that I certainly no longer worry about the good things in life coming too easily (as I did on that afternoon long ago in the car). This is because the quest I am on presents challenges at every turn. Today it's getting the tomato sauce canned and sealed. Tomorrow it's sharpening the hoe. And in the meantime there's the writing to do: another page of the novel to set down, another character to keep stoked with another shovelful of words. Or maybe some preliminary thought to dig like compost into the blog.

I want to say too that for me as an writer, the moral imperative to homestead as well as to write has meant setting aside the ambition to become this or that in anyone's eyes quickly and young, and focusing instead as purely as possible on the real basis for accomplishment in art, which is to say, on the inner vision of the heart as it beholds the spectacle of the world and on articulating that with beauty and passionate attention to the truth, period and regardless. In literature, as well as the practical living day, there is no substitute for the long honest road home. 

And I hope that the truth is what I have been writing here. 


HB 



 

When the House is Burning Down...

A change of pace here. From meditation to analysis. From the concrete and close-at-hand to the systemic and abstract. From the home economy of Sunny-side to the simulated fictions of Wall Street. A post on oil:

Amid the river of blather about energy independence, vast shale oil reserves, and all the accompanying malarkey, once in awhile you can sieve out the tiniest little nugget of the real-world, experienced truth. Here's one such nugget from Bloomberg in an article that's mostly about the Gulf spill:

Exxon, BP, Shell, Chevron Corp. and Total SA earned more than $1 trillion in total profit during the past decade, almost all of which has been spent in the search for new pools of oil and natural gas. Since 2004, the five companies have tripled capital spending and their combined output has fallen by 1.4 million barrels a day, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Let's just repeat, just to make sure we've got that: since 2004 big oil, at great expense, has been in an increasingly desperate search for new oil. Like a male porn star in search of a penis. Or a bent wheel in search of some pi. Pretty much all their profits have gone toward finding more oil. In fact, they've tripled their spending on exploration and drilling, and what have they gotten for it? Less oil!

Actually, that's old news. Actually the nightmare for them goes deeper than that. Check this out, if you don't mind glazing your eyes a bit.

Lots of boring true information here, which is to say, it's dynamite. Especially about three quarters of the way through to the end, where the good man points out that in the last year or two, the oil majors have been selling OFF leases and cutting BACK on exploration and drilling just to keep the cash flow up and investors satisfied. Now, how long can they keep that up?

Folks, at the risk of stating the obvious, the oil industry is in trouble. Big oil. Little oil. Heavy oil. Tight oil. Natural gas. There's no revolution here, only something like a relentlessly closing door of bonded steel. If you're invested in it in any way, get out. Sure the money, because of speculation, HAS BEEN good. Sure economists are still telling us we're in the middle of a energy revolution or even at the cusp of one. 

Trust a playwright who knows his tragedy: this bubble of the so-called energy revolution's gonna blow. And it's a big one. Probably God himself couldn't tease out the knot of who all's involved. It's property. It's equities. It's heavy equipment. It's honking big banks. It's Mom and Dad in Shalesville, PA. Heck it's even the Norwegians, who in a fairly recent fit of idiocy bought billions in Texas land holdings from Chesapeake, which, by the way, in spite of being the biggest shale energy producer in the US, and in spite of trying for something like 15 years, has never made a PENNY on sale of product. Though by god it has made a profit or two selling the pipe dream.

In a word, this bubble's big.

Again, trust a playwright. Playwrights have a nose for drama around the corner. 

My own feeling too, is that when this thing goes down, there isn't going to be a fix for it--not one that's relevant in our lifetimes anyway. We've done the bailout thing. The US is already something like 150 percent of GDP in debt, which is to say, up our eyeballs. Interest rates are already basically zero. Heck in Europe the rates are negative. How are we going to fix another serious recession? Where's the voltage for more stimulus?

Folks, there's no more fix to fix it with. 

If you're an investor, especially in equities, consider cash. Really. Sure the market could still go up, but the best gamblers know when to stop, especially when they smell the house is burning down. 

HB