Enjoy An Insight

Ever have one of those days? Everybody does. It’s a real bummer of a day (bummer is hippie speak for misfortune). It’s one of those days when you say to yourself, “Why me?” or “Why now?”

You’re up before the sun “working in a coal mine, going down down,” and someone says, “Lord! I am soooo tired. How long can this go on?” Not that you actually work in a coal mine (unless you do). We’re talking metaphor. We all work in a coal mine of one kind or another. Even those who don’t work, work in a coal mine of a kind.

It’s on a “one of those days” day that you look for a sign that there’s more to life. Not that you’re superstitious. It’s just that when life is boring, pointless and terrible, most of us look for a sign that there’s more to it. Even those who don’t believe in miracles look for them.

But few people see signs these days and those who do are maligned. We might crave a vision but all we have is TV. It’s not because the signs aren’t there that we don’t see them.

We don’t see them because we’re either not paying attention or we lack imagination. It takes a special kind of sensitivity to subtlety for a person to see signs and put it together.

In 1989 two math professors wrote “Methods for Studying Coincidences” in which they outlined four sources for most coincidences: 1) a hidden cause, 2) the psychology of a person, including memory and perception, 3) multiplicity of endpoints, including the counting of “close” or nearly alike events as if they were identical, and 4) the law of truly large numbers – given enough events, almost any coincidence is bound to occur.

They found that most puzzling coincidences arise in the mind of the observer. Therein is the magic! That’s the answer! You alone see the sign! You create magic by tuning into it!

Coincidence?

If you pay attention and if you lighten up and if you go for silly walks now and then you will become familiar with wonderful oddities (for complete instructions see: Ministry of Silly Walks) .

Call it coincidence. Call it ironic, moronic or divine. Call it just one of those things. Beyond rationalization, confabulation and logical explanation, there are times when weird things happen and you are in a perfect position to see them (see earlier post: “Enjoy What Is And Take What Comes“).

The Slant.

Let’s say you’re on your way to get your blood tested. As you peddle past a pretty storybook house with a fountain, you’re reminded of fairy-land pictures you’ve seen. The thought occurs to you that you and everyone you know will soon be dead.

It sounds gloomy, but at this moment it isn’t. Knowing that everything you know and have ever known will soon be gone has a way of putting things in perspective (see earlier post “Enjoy A Bad Day“).

What’s the worse case scenario in any situation? You could die. But you know that’s going to happen anyway so, as Dire Straits put it, “Why worry?”

No sooner do you have this realization when you see a sign. But it isn’t the sign that catches your attention. It’s the sign spinner. Stopped at a streetlight, you watch the sign spinner. Suddenly life doesn’t seem so bad.

And you hear music coming from somewhere. It’s Tommy James and the Shondells singing Draggin’ the Line which goes: “Makin’ a livin’ the old, hard way. Takin’ and givin’ my day by day. / I dig snow and rain and the bright sunshine…/ My dog Sam eats purple flowers.
Ain’t got much, but what we got’s ours… / I feel fine!”

What you thought was going to be “one of those days” changes into something beautiful when you open yourself to connection and possibility.

Jump forward: now you’re in a lab cubicle waiting for a nurse to take your blood. You’re listening to the Moody Blues sing “Tuesday Afternoon” and you think, “That’s funny. It is a Tuesday afternoon!”

The nurse comes in and prepares the syringe. You avert your eyes and on the wall you see a picture of a fountain. It looks like the fountain you saw earlier by the storybook house that reminded you of pictures that you once saw of a fairyland of love. They say that fountains symbolize joy and peace and water is the sign of calmness. All you know is that you like water fountains.

You may look back on your life like a Dickens’ novel. Life seems planned but little accidental meetings and experiences turn out to be main features of the plot. At this minute, looking around at the world as you do, you suddenly have an insight.

You marvel at the wonder of life and in so doing, enjoy it.

Enjoy What Is And Take What Comes

What does a sparrow see? Science can explain how a sparrow sees colour, movement and so on, but she can’t relay the actual experience of seeing. You’d need a sparrow gifted with the ability to describe what she sees in a language better than, “Chirp, chirp,” for a human to understand.

We can imagine and simulate birdlike seeing with drones, skydiving and literature, but the experience itself: of bird seeing, as bird in bird form within bird reality, is unavailable to us. The same holds true for other animals and people too.

It’s like the chorus to Nik Kershaw’s song that goes, “Wouldn’t it be good to be in your shoes, even if it was for just one day. And wouldn’t it be good, if we could wish ourselves away. Wouldn’t it be good to be on your side, the grass is always greener over there. And wouldn’t it be good, if we could live without a care” (Wouldn’t It Be Good). Of course Nik is singing about wanting to be in the shoes of a lover and sparrows don’t normally wear shoes; nevertheless, a feeling of dissatisfaction with one’s life is common.

Wanting to be as free as a sparrow is pretty universal. They look so happy. “What is that?” asks an old man. “A sparrow,” says his son lacking patience. Some might think, “Wouldn’t it be good to be a sparrow? Zipping from tree to tree! Eat a seed and you’re good for the day.” That may be so. To be free is beautiful, but then again, it’s all fun and games until you fly into a picture window.

Scientists can explain the mechanics of eyeballs: how they function and how to fix them, but in terms of perception – the link between world “out there” as taken in by eyeballs, and the mind’s interpretation of that world – science can’t say.

It’s a bit like the sparrow scenario. Nobody but you can see what you see. You are a kind of sparrow, but one without wings, without a beak, without feathers or bird feet.

Science can identify your species and proclivities but not your mystery. Nobody but you knows what it’s like to be you and even then, you hardly notice.

Think about what you see. As you walk, arms not swinging, looking at your feet, eyes glazed like donuts, imagine that you’re in a silent helicopter or a balloon looking down at landscapes far away and small.

It feels like there are third person things down there and all around and digging deeper into the experience of being, you observe a strange first person phenomena where you are the one looking.

We each think of ourselves as a subject in a world of objects. We think we have an inner stream of consciousness that babbles, sometimes turbulent, sometimes calm, but are you in the stream, the stream itself or the one looking at the stream?

Are you the inner story you tell yourself?

The trick to enjoyment isn’t in self-absorption. It’s the opposite. It’s in going outward. Don’t ask yourself how you should move. Step forward and let the world move through you. Don’t second guess what you say, speak from your heart.

Mick Jagger said a mouthful at the buffet when he said, “You can’t always get what you want”, but if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need.”

When you’re in the world without thought for gain or advantage, with humility and humour, you don’t feel self-conscious. When you’re in the moment, your inner story drops away and your consciousness and self-consciousness is gone (Hubert Dreyfus, 2013).

Science tells us we perceive only reflected colours. Red is not “in” an apple. An apple reflects wavelengths that we see as red with our light receptors. Our eyes and brain together “translate light into colour” (How Do We See Color). Reality is a merging of world and interpretation.

In the immortal words of Arsenio Hall who while driving in his car one day pondered certain thoughts and referred to them as “things that make you go hmm…” inspiring the C + C Music Factory to sing the same, so too we explore things that make us go hmm, except instead of singing about infidelity, we sing of coincidence and connection, of links in chains between what we see and do and what is seen and done. We enjoy.

No special powers are required to experience beauty. Enjoy peace and looking without knowing. Forget who you think you are. Answers to the deepest questions like, “What’s it all for?” are in the lives we lead. Observe your unfolding.

There is a double vision between self and situation. Inside and outside are two sides of one coin. You see through a massive window, not as a thing inside. The world out there comes inside with each step you take forward.

Ideas in this unhurried mental receptacle are fuzzy; fuzzy like a pussy willow is fuzzy; fuzzy like a little yellow duckling that goes, “Peep. Peep. Peep.”

And, like a peeping fuzzy duckling, your life is nature’s music without notation.

The trick to enjoying the life you’re in is to sing with humble tickled amusement a melodious duck song.

 

Congeniality, Ideal Goodness and Enjoyment

Two guys are driving in a vintage car in Portland, Oregon. The driver says to the passenger, “I think you’re supposed to have fun in life.” “I’m right with you,” says the passenger shaking his head from side to side. “Great,” says the driver. “Right with you,” repeats the passenger.

They rattle on. “I’m really enjoying this car. Are you?” “I love it,” says the passenger.

As far-fetched as it sounds, this conversation happened. The guys are Jerry Seinfeld and Fred Armisen. The show is Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.

It’s not hard to imagine two congenial friends like this having fun together, but what about someone who doesn’t have fun? What then?

Someone enters the words, “no enjoyment out of life” as a search term and finds this blog. Does it help or is it like John Steinbeck said in 1961, “No one wants advice, only corroboration?”

You can set the stage for enjoyment like they do in Comedians in Cars, but whether you get it or not, depends.

There’s a knack to it.

A banker.

Ask people: “What do you do if you have no enjoyment?” From a banker you get a loan. From a stoic you get, “Do what you can, not what you can’t.” From a positive psychologist you get, “Think positive!” (and take your damn anti-depressants!).

From a bartender you get a drink. From a hedonist you get hedonism. From a believer you get belief. From a radical you get radicalized. From Big Joe Turner you get Shake, Rattle and Roll.

What you get depends on who’s giving it. Things like receptivity (What Do You Enjoy?), determination (The First Step), awareness (Who am I?) and planning (Rules of Enjoyment) help, but there’s more to it.

It’s like what Chris Rock said in Comedians in Cars when Jerry asked him what he thought of a car. Chris Rock said, “I like you Jerry… everything is about the company … If we were in a cab, we would probably be having the same exact conversation.”

Someone who gets no enjoyment probably won’t get it from lighthearted banter and a Lamborghini. You need an ideal.

Life is justified by its fruits. Whether you eat or drink, do so for the sake of life, of enjoyment and the ideal of goodness. What is goodness? You know it when you see it. A good is a natural delight in the the senses, in affections, and in the mind. A vision of heaven on earth is ideal goodness.

That the end of life is death may sound sad, but what other end could anything have? At the end of a party you go to bed. At the end of a dance, you sit down. At the end of the day, you go home. After tea, you wash your cup.

Transitoriness is essential. Existence is change.

Things get sad with sentimentality. When we imagine that an end is untimely, we get sad. The trick is to live in the presence of ideal goodness. It’s all around. You die, but goodness doesn’t.

The world can be dangerous. We take shelter in human constructions, but the next storm, earthquake, or bomb can take it down. Despite the odds of catastrophe, pain and suffering, challenge the assumptions you have of a universe of desires and come to self-knowledge. You get it when you don’t. It’s a new order. The decision is yours.

The vision you’re having right now is your life. Here. Now. Reading this silly little blog, you can be completely aware of yourself in the place you are. Seeing with these eyes. The voice you hear is your own.

Marcus Aurelius as he looked in 151 AD.

If you are catastrophe free, count yourself glad. If not, as the stoic said, “You win. You lose.” Or, as Marcus Aurelius said when he stubbed his toe on a throne, “Misfortune nobly born is good fortune” (Meditations).

Forge on. Become goodness incarnate. Goodness shows as humility, kindness and a lack of self-centredness. Empathize! Enjoy updowns.

Henry Thoreau as he looked in 1861.

Breathe a silent sigh. As an animal with a mind, filled with folly, happiness and sorrow, a stupid dreaming creature with odd perspectives in the midst of a vast natural world, quietly observe the place you find yourself in and look for harmonies. Imagine yourself as the earth seeing itself seeing itself.

Ideal goodness is the enjoyment that emerges when you connect or as Henry Thoreau said to himself in the woods after leaving the pencil factory, “Goodness is the only investment that never fails” (Walden, 1854).

So, what do you do? Live the ideal of good. Live in the imagination of ultimate things and like Mother said, “Go outside! Be good!” Enjoy the music of strawberries in the summertime (even if they’re in your mind).

Here’s The Thing

Everyone knows that horrible, terrible, and disgusting things happen. The News is not always good. People are nuts. Flies exist and it’s hard to open a pickle jar now and again, but that’s beside the point!

We know that bad stuff happens! It’s obvious – just look around – but could bad stuff be just a distraction? With your head well-above the sand, you can probably see how life oscillates between good and bad, on and off, life and death. First good, then bad, then good, bad, bad, good – you get the picture. Life is fraught with adversity. Life lives off of itself. It truly is a bitter sweet symphony.

If you want to enjoy the experience of living as you are in this body with that face that looks back at you dumbly, you have to try to enjoy living. In so doing enjoyment is shared forward. This is your Philosophy of Enjoyment. It comes with a money back guarantee.

If you want to will yourself happy, you need the courage and freedom to become nothing but an impersonal consciousness. This isn’t to say that you don’t care for others, it’s just that you are willing to be light as a feather. To be nothing-but-an-impersonal-consciousness means that you excuse yourself from self-importance.

To enjoy, really enjoy, one must be so immersed that one becomes enjoyment. One becomes the eyes that see and the ears that hear. The islands of other selves all around are doing the same. Each person feels alone so be kind to every one of them, for each one is a another you.

What is the value of a frog? Not much, but the value of a frog to itself is priceless. A healthy frog is a happy frog. To live to enjoy living is what a frog appears to be doing. Why else would it try so hard to get away? A living frog wants to keep living. To be a frog another day is the goal of every frog eating a fly. That’s what this trip is about. It’s circular. To live is to enjoy living and to enjoy living is to make living enjoyable. You are like a frog except for the unexpectedly long sticky tongue.

No matter how great you might think you are: you’re not. Nobody is superior to any one else. Much depends on chance, opportunity and ability. People get misplaced priorities. They judge. They find fault or they grieve over faults. People get self-absorbed. They do some smart things and they do some stupid things, but when you get right down to it, under the skin, behind the eyes, in the heart, everybody is a lonely soul within a singularity.

The key to enjoyment is to lose one’s self in the enjoyment of living or, as Kurt Vonnegut so aptly put it, “We’re here to fart around.” Making a lot of yourself can get in the way of enjoyment. Expect what you get and get what you expect. The more important you think you are, the more you set yourself apart.

Life isn’t easy. Even those who find it easy say it isn’t. Why be surprised when there’s trouble? Trouble is part of not having trouble. Being untroubled is to be without it. The trick to enjoyment is to defy trouble. Troubling trouble by being untroubled is enjoyable. It’s fun to say, “Troubles be gone!” 

To be untroubled is freedom from trouble. Freedom from trouble is enjoyable. Anything enjoyable is itself enjoyable. Bring it on home!

Defy! Defy! Defy! Just as it is easier to endure pain, anxiety and calamity with defiance, so too is it easier to enjoy enjoyment by defying it to be otherwise. Troubles are doubled when one resigns to them. Without expectations one is never dissatisfied. Be the wedge between sensation and emotion and feel the magic of life living.

The Great Big Huge Secret

It is common for people to ask: What is the meaning of life? Such a question assumes that life is like a word which symbolizes something other than what it is. To get your head around the idea that the question about life having meaning is quixotic or nonsensical, replace the word life with something from nature, as in: What is the meaning of a flower? What is the meaning of a tree? What is the meaning of a duck? 

A flower flowers. A tree trees. A duck ducks (especially when a stone is tossed at its head).

What is the meaning of quack? A duck may have an intention for saying it but to our ears, it’s just a sound. To us the meaning of quack is the sound it makes. In like manner, the meaning of a duck is to live as a duck – to be a duck. To duck or to flower or to tree is an action that happens in and of itself. The same holds true for you. You, you. You’re a you-you!

Science can explain the what’s and how’s of a species of duck – its behaviours and interconnectedness to other living things – but as to why there is a duck at all, science is mute.

Religion provides explanations as to why there are flowers, trees and ducks, but those explanations depend on belief systems. Belief, no matter how entrenched it may be, is not verifiable by one’s senses and although science may be verifiable, it cannot explain the why’s. When it comes to explaining why there are flowers, trees and ducks, science and religion are inadequate. That’s where you come in.

When someone walks into a landscape alone and takes the time to smell a flower, to touch a tree or to hear the melodic song of a duck, the meaning of these things is meaningless. This is not to be dismissive of the existence of a flower, tree or duck, but to physically sense that these things exist and that in their existence they are enjoyable, that’s what matters.

What they mean is what you experience as yourself with them.

The more you can use your senses to get them into yourself – to get their beauty and significance – the more your enjoyment of them becomes what they are for you. In your selfishness you can appreciate them for the betterment of your life experience and personal enjoyment.

The only other creature that can enjoy a duck quite as much as you would be another duck or maybe a fox, but that’s another story.

The great big huge secret is that your will can make you enjoy what surrounds you. Every organic thing has its own secret reaction to its surroundings. This is its living purpose. This is your living purpose too. It has nothing to do with achievement. Humans have a habit of substituting unimportant things and strivings for what matters which is to react to living and to enjoy that reaction. You can make yourself take the time to take in your surroundings.

Happiness is not based on circumstance. A bum can enjoy life more than a millionaire. It’s in the attitude. That is what those old silent films of Charlie Chaplin were about. Through humour, a fighting spirit, and loneliness, anyone can experience life as utterly enjoyable. With this attitude, even when it’s bad, it’s good.

Everyone has to endure what he or she has to endure. We must bear pains as well as we can for the sake of enjoying the pleasures. The huge secret is that you are able to enjoy what we are able to enjoy. A person is a universe of one. Happiness is not any kind of happiness. Happiness is never any feverish, vulgar or superficial pursuit of pleasure. Go outside and give it a try. See if you can enjoy flowers, trees and ducks.

Knee Deep In Flowers We’ll Stray

Have you ever felt dull? The kind of dull that washes away beauty? Most people have. Some people have.

The mood could be described as a blah sort of feeling. It’s the feeling that drives lottery ticket sales and drug and booze industries – as if money or oblivion could make a difference to indifference.

At such times, when we feel dull, we may wonder where is my mind without realizing that’s what’s wrong. We’ve been sucked into the vacuum of our light-bulb heads.

When someone is stuck doing something that numbs the senses, when someone is stuck like an egg in an in an egg-carton world, it’s easy to forget how amazing it is to be alive here and now. If we’re reminded of the mystery of life while in such a mood, we get annoyed. We think, Yeah. I know. I know. Smell the roses. Blah. Blah. Big deal. Go away. Leave me alone. Smelling the roses feels like a vapid platitude. To see another person happy is to feel resentment. To hear advice from an optimistic fathead is reason for murder.

At such times we’re reminded that we’re social creatures so people push themselves to be with others and then feel irritated. There isn’t anything anybody can do to alter our mood. This is a project for the self. Solitude may be necessary, but then, even if alone, we don’t enjoy ourselves. We are lost in ourselves. The outside world doesn’t exist or we find fault with it.

Humans are plagued by a dry-rot of unhappiness. It’s not because of poverty, unemployment, sickness or death. It isn’t for lack of health care or education. Unhappiness of the kind described has a definite cause. Few people realize that it can be removed with the power of one’s will. It’s so easy that it isn’t.

Because we don electronic blinders and plug our ears with noise, we feel separated, but what if – what if – the world outside our bodies didn’t start at the edge of our skin?

Try this experiment. Stop what you’re doing and go outside or look out a window and imagine that the outside world is not separate from you. Imagine that the air in your lungs is the same air outside your lungs and that you are permeable. Imagine that what you’re made of is the same thing that makes up rocks, trees, and flowers. Imagine a flower, a rock, a blade of grass is as much you as your fingernail or hair. You don’t have to believe it or tell anyone. It sounds crazy. Just enjoy the notion without over-thinking it.

Moments of unhappiness come when we don’t notice anything outside ourselves. We get into a vicious circle of immediate thoughts and practicalities.

When you forget to lose yourself in the contemplation of the outside world – the not-you, or all that stuff all around – that’s when unhappiness strikes. We go on a head-trip. There will always be a part of yourself that can’t get out of thinking about itself and yet, only by losing yourself in the absorption of the world outside can you grow happy.

Madness comes when inward visions lose their imaginative outwardness. The more you can concentrate on the outside world, the more your real identity grows. You are an earth-creature just like other earth-creatures.

The next time you feel dull, take a break from what you’re thinking and look outside. Concentrate on the mystery of your being alive at all. Imagine the world outside your body is your outward vision. What’s outside is going inside. Call yourself a lonely soul with a sense of relief. Only the lonely soul can go into the outside world day by day.

With a calm and prolonged satisfaction, drink in your surroundings as if it were a mirror of yourself. Imagine tip toeing through tulips. Hear that song. Imagine being knee deep in flowers and you are.

What’s your philosophy?

If you’ve reached adulthood, it’s probably clear to you by now that everyone has to face good times and bad. There are ups and downs and how you deal with them depends on your philosophy.

Whether knowingly or not, everyone has a philosophy. The trick is to keep it simple. Find a philosophy that’s right for you.

With the Philosophy of Enjoyment, from The First Step to the Will to Enjoy, the goal of life is to enjoy.

This isn’t to say that you enjoy yourself at the expense of others. Enjoying yourself at the expense of others will lead to trouble. If you think you are more important than other creatures (think Presidents, movie stars and or billionaires) you are not. True enjoyment requires kindness, humility and sensitivity.

Helping others to enjoy themselves is enjoyable and if you hurt others, they will enjoy hurting you. It’s a ping-pong thing.All creatures are alone, together. Whether duck or human, it’s appropriate to enjoy.

If enjoyment is selfish, then every living creature is selfish. Even helping another could be construed as selfish. It’s all in how you look at it.

The keys to enjoyment are found in sensual awareness and contemplation. You don’t need a particular lifestyle with lots of possessions or acquaintances or admiration from the crowd. You don’t need luxury. Those things might be enjoyable, but they’re not necessary.

Professional philosophers debate the nature of enjoyment and happiness, but you know what it’s about. You know when you are enjoying yourself and when you are not. You know that when others are not enjoying themselves, its better when they are.

If you have a philosophy of enjoyment, morality is simple. What is good is kind and what is evil is cruel. It’s what children know. It’s natural. Trouble rises when people get unnatural.

Imagine that you are a cloud hovering above a city. What do you see?

You see a few people enjoying themselves in a park (a few sky watching), but the majority are busy acting like ants in an ant hill or wasps in a wasp nest.

Why is that?

People act like ants and or wasps because they’ve lost touch with enjoyment. They’re busy for the sake of business. In the battle of life, they think it’s a survival-of-the-fittest game. They don’t realize that survival for the sake of survival isn’t what it’s about.

People conclude that life is suffering so they go about doing just that. They get technological, industrial, mechanical and electronic. They lose touch with nature. They choose virtual over a real. They favour artificial intelligence over biological.

One reason for ant hill behaviour relates to the type of person each unique individual is. There are basically two types of people: There are saints and there are earth-creatures. People get lost between two extremes. Let’s break it down.

A saint’s mind is fixed on pity. Sadness is the prevailing emotion. Other people are the priority and suffering love is the ideal. For a saint personal enjoyment is pretty much irrelevant. Saints thrive on abstractions, not sensations.

A saint is sad about the tragedy of life because there is poverty, starvation and disease. Saints feel sorry for people but not themselves. Saints feel superior. Saints aren’t funny. They don’t laugh at the absurdities of life. They take it all very serious.

Earth-creatures on the other hand, are just the opposite.

Happiness is the prevailing emotion in earth-creatures. Self is the priority.

Earth-creatures are happiness seekers. They understand what drives other selves to do what they do because they have a self and they do it too.

Earth-creatures live sensuously on food and drink. They cope with tragedy and focus on beauty. Unlike a saint who may see life as tragic, earth-creatures like to laugh because life is comic. Humour helps them enjoy life. They know ecstasy comes and goes.Earth-creatures (including some humans) enjoy the lightness of being. They value humility over superiority and power. They live for sunshine and rain and if they are like that woman in a Rolling Stones’ song, they might even be a rainbow (see: “She’s A Rainbow“).

Despite death, disease and starvation, earth-creatures can experience moments of elation from simple things like a drop of rain, a kiss, a kind word, the sight of a happy dog’s wagging tail, a country road, a piece of bread and jam, a hot beverage, a friend.

So, what’s it going to be? Which would you rather be: a saint or an earth-creature?

What’s your philosophy?