“Marketed lifestyles have fiddled with our emotions and misdirected us since birth, making our lives appear unlivable without more.” Can anything ring more true than this? Excellent, Corey!
I can’t read or think about happiness without Michael Cunningham’s The Hours coming to mind: “I remember thinking to myself: So this is the beginning of happiness, this is where it starts. And of course there will always be more...never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment, right then.”
Jordan Peterson said "Happiness' is a pointless goal. Don't compare yourself with other people, compare yourself with who you were yesterday. No one gets away with anything, ever, so take responsibility for your own life. You conjure your own world, not only metaphorically but also literally and neurologically." Life is not about being happy all the time. Life is suffering. If you can have happiness in moments then you can be truly grateful but do not expect them. He really changed my perspective on the idea of happiness.
“My actions can’t attain happiness, only express it.” I enjoy thinking about this line, Corey, and about what is expressed in the action of your sharing this contemplation. 🎈
I thought, too, as I read of a time, I lay stretched on a road in the state of, well, not soberness, enamored of the glimmering of what I would later fully realize was broken glass.
Thank you for this reflection of the states we can find ourselves in, bring ourselves to, ponder.
I stumbled into your work, being sober for 25 years and hearing your voice often feels so much like my own tumbling thoughts. I want to write them out and have tried many, many times but I hesitate and hesitation turns to inadequacy and inadequacy becomes paralysis. So I read to find my words elsewhere and am comforted by people like you.
Wasn't sure where you were going with at first but I do agree with some of what you said. I agree with you about learning to love being alone - I do and take time off work just to be alone when I really feel over peopled. Happiness comes from inside and not in having the latest I phone or 90" telly
"Except for the time I told my father I love him, I had yet to tell a real lie." Powerful words. Can't absorb any others. And yet, you are not the narrator? "
I had yet to tell a real lie" You know a big one. So big I felt dizzy and sick to my stomach. And why? Why, oh why had I uttered those words? Dumb bitch. Fool... eyes darting ,choking vomit I desperately wanted the earth to swallow me whole. Anything was better than standing here; face red, sweat running, heart thumping like a Wilder beast. Shifting my weight I gingerly tested if I could move and then bolted for the door. No chorus sang, no birds chirped and I don't think he heard me. That's what I decided. He didn't hear me. I walked out safe. Close call, close call. Open the hatch, open the hatch, slam it shut, slam it shut, Melodie. Don't let the cat out, don't let the cat out. Stupid bitch, stupid bitch the crow shrilled. Run away, run away the monkey screeched. Shut up, shut up, I inwardly screamed, rocking and rocking to the beat of the drum. Head bobbing, nails digging as I pounded my legs in the dark. Lights out, lights out he bellowed.
Not that you need a suggestion from me, you're already a great writer, but have you ever tried not changing a single word in your storyline, but making it a sentence in a wider story. Like zoom out from the sentence and see what the story is?
"If the old me chose to switch tracks and veer into sober insanity only to see his daughter and make life easier to navigate, to please others, out of pride, to live, then his self-interest taints my progress."
Perhaps there exists a weighting system.
Where the part of old you that had thought of another - your daughter, any others - counts for more and skews any measurement of progress in your favour.
Love it all, Corey. The way your mind seems to lurch along, with intricate zigzags, towards SOMEthing, something ultimately unnameable. I agree with you that happiness doesn't really work as a full-time way of being.
"To be constantly happy for your entire life would be unbearable and boring, I think. How would you even know you were happy?"
I think this is why we're here. (Bear with me; I am not a religious man, so take as much metaphoric license as you wish; or don't bear me at all and vehemently disagree.) God got bored with the sameness of everything. So he Banged, Big time, and he's still Banging, and we're all part of that. The universe continues to expand, and our minds' main "purpose" (which is a word God laughs at, at first, but then sobers up and thinks, "Maybe there is something to this thing I/Me/Us/We seem to be doing." He wants to be as uncertain as we are; he is, in fact, us.) is to expand along dimensions beyond the four we so easily see and measure.
I like the cut of your jib, Corey. Your daughter will learn a lot from you (and does already, of course). Thanks for doing your thing.
Oh, and your story about laying in the road reminds me a bit of one time I had a horrible bout of insomnia in college. I ended up slipping on my cheap flip flops and walking around campus, late at night on a school night, for hours and hours. The calluses on my feet reminded me of the strange wakewalking for many days thereafter. Sometimes the body just decides it needs to try something.
“Marketed lifestyles have fiddled with our emotions and misdirected us since birth, making our lives appear unlivable without more.” Can anything ring more true than this? Excellent, Corey!
I can’t read or think about happiness without Michael Cunningham’s The Hours coming to mind: “I remember thinking to myself: So this is the beginning of happiness, this is where it starts. And of course there will always be more...never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment, right then.”
Thank you for this!
Happiness is an inside job...Heard that at a meeting more than 30 years ago. Still seems to work.
Jordan Peterson said "Happiness' is a pointless goal. Don't compare yourself with other people, compare yourself with who you were yesterday. No one gets away with anything, ever, so take responsibility for your own life. You conjure your own world, not only metaphorically but also literally and neurologically." Life is not about being happy all the time. Life is suffering. If you can have happiness in moments then you can be truly grateful but do not expect them. He really changed my perspective on the idea of happiness.
“My actions can’t attain happiness, only express it.” I enjoy thinking about this line, Corey, and about what is expressed in the action of your sharing this contemplation. 🎈
I thought, too, as I read of a time, I lay stretched on a road in the state of, well, not soberness, enamored of the glimmering of what I would later fully realize was broken glass.
Thank you for this reflection of the states we can find ourselves in, bring ourselves to, ponder.
Stardust, manufactured stars, capable constellations are beautifully painted words.
I stumbled into your work, being sober for 25 years and hearing your voice often feels so much like my own tumbling thoughts. I want to write them out and have tried many, many times but I hesitate and hesitation turns to inadequacy and inadequacy becomes paralysis. So I read to find my words elsewhere and am comforted by people like you.
Wasn't sure where you were going with at first but I do agree with some of what you said. I agree with you about learning to love being alone - I do and take time off work just to be alone when I really feel over peopled. Happiness comes from inside and not in having the latest I phone or 90" telly
Here, fixed it for you (it wants to be a poem, not a story):
Except for the time
I told my father
I loved him,
I had yet to tell
a real lie.
Plus, I’m totally stealing this line (will give you credit):
“My life wasn’t terrible, though it seemed unnecessary.”
"Except for the time I told my father I loved him, I had yet to tell a real lie."
I don't feel that line as an anchor to build around. It struck me as the last line ... almost as an after thought.
Pessoa has a way of showing up when you need him.
Appreciated your part about lying down, yellow lines splitting... 🙏
"Except for the time I told my father I love him, I had yet to tell a real lie." Powerful words. Can't absorb any others. And yet, you are not the narrator? "
I had yet to tell a real lie" You know a big one. So big I felt dizzy and sick to my stomach. And why? Why, oh why had I uttered those words? Dumb bitch. Fool... eyes darting ,choking vomit I desperately wanted the earth to swallow me whole. Anything was better than standing here; face red, sweat running, heart thumping like a Wilder beast. Shifting my weight I gingerly tested if I could move and then bolted for the door. No chorus sang, no birds chirped and I don't think he heard me. That's what I decided. He didn't hear me. I walked out safe. Close call, close call. Open the hatch, open the hatch, slam it shut, slam it shut, Melodie. Don't let the cat out, don't let the cat out. Stupid bitch, stupid bitch the crow shrilled. Run away, run away the monkey screeched. Shut up, shut up, I inwardly screamed, rocking and rocking to the beat of the drum. Head bobbing, nails digging as I pounded my legs in the dark. Lights out, lights out he bellowed.
Not that you need a suggestion from me, you're already a great writer, but have you ever tried not changing a single word in your storyline, but making it a sentence in a wider story. Like zoom out from the sentence and see what the story is?
I love how this piece meanders. So many gems.
"If the old me chose to switch tracks and veer into sober insanity only to see his daughter and make life easier to navigate, to please others, out of pride, to live, then his self-interest taints my progress."
Perhaps there exists a weighting system.
Where the part of old you that had thought of another - your daughter, any others - counts for more and skews any measurement of progress in your favour.
Love it all, Corey. The way your mind seems to lurch along, with intricate zigzags, towards SOMEthing, something ultimately unnameable. I agree with you that happiness doesn't really work as a full-time way of being.
"To be constantly happy for your entire life would be unbearable and boring, I think. How would you even know you were happy?"
I think this is why we're here. (Bear with me; I am not a religious man, so take as much metaphoric license as you wish; or don't bear me at all and vehemently disagree.) God got bored with the sameness of everything. So he Banged, Big time, and he's still Banging, and we're all part of that. The universe continues to expand, and our minds' main "purpose" (which is a word God laughs at, at first, but then sobers up and thinks, "Maybe there is something to this thing I/Me/Us/We seem to be doing." He wants to be as uncertain as we are; he is, in fact, us.) is to expand along dimensions beyond the four we so easily see and measure.
I like the cut of your jib, Corey. Your daughter will learn a lot from you (and does already, of course). Thanks for doing your thing.
Oh, and your story about laying in the road reminds me a bit of one time I had a horrible bout of insomnia in college. I ended up slipping on my cheap flip flops and walking around campus, late at night on a school night, for hours and hours. The calluses on my feet reminded me of the strange wakewalking for many days thereafter. Sometimes the body just decides it needs to try something.