Detour to Bliss

Listening to the echo of my last blog, I decided it'd be good for me to face a bit more uncertainty, so I moved... not across the street, across the town, or across the Bay Bridge, as I had so many times previously; no, I undertook the most daring adventure I could ponder, at least within the continental US: I moved to Texas.

TEXAS?! The proverbial gasp precedes you.

Yes, Texas.

Why TEXAS?!

Dare you give me one reason I should not have moved here? Okay, other than the conflicting, overly enthusiastic political persuasion, the unbreakable bond between church and state, the diluted affinity for country music, the heat, the lack of mountains, the silly accents, the 10-gallon egos, the oil industry, George W. Bush, the fire ants...

Yes, Texas. What seems perverted to the cohort I left behind in California is that I wanted to move to Texas (and let's be clear, I'm talking about the least Texan city in Texas, I moved to Austin) so I could be happy. It was not impromptu or a decision I came to lightly. I am not the kind of person that can just throw my life in a backpack and call "home" where ever my feet press against the dust. I am not so breezily "giving this a try." I wrestled the idea for many, many months, and in that time I held a mirror up to my life so I could reflect on what I'd be potentially divorcing. Despite the ocean and the bay, the mountains, the wine country, the rich cultural diversity, and the friends I had grown to love like family, all I really saw staring back was struggle, dissatisfaction, and the weathered marks of a 6 year lament. My experiences in California were valuable, and I grew up quite a lot, but like a cactus, I grew older without growing roots any deeper than surface layer. I had the basic needs met, but nothing gave me strength or a meaningful reason to stay.

It whittled down to 2 options, but both of them included a larger network of friends and family that would sustain me and nourish my displaced roots: I could go back to Michigan, or I could risk it and move to the Lone Star State.

"Life starts when you accept the maybe and make friends with the unknown."  I said that. It's about time I practice what I preach.

Once the last box was packed and loaded and directions to Austin were printed out, my purpose shifted from survival mode to getting-happy mode. I've experienced quite enough depression and self-loathing for this life-time and the next, however long they last me, and as we all well know, there's no time like today - nay - this very moment to be one's truest most authentic self. Even though I've been more or less passively journeying down the yellow brick road my entire life trying to discover happiness, I recognized I had an opportunity to use this transitional period to really gaze inwardly and find what would give me more control of my happiness.

You see, from day 1 in California... shit, frankly, even on the road trip out there... I started looking for "signs," tallying up reasons my existence there was "meant to be." Unfortunately, maybe because of my shit-tinted glasses of depression, I always had a larger tally in the "not meant to be" pool (ie: slept on a plywood bed in a "furnished" rented room, resulting in suing my landlord, also resulting in losing the only friend I knew in San Francisco; my bike was stolen; my jobs lost funding; my roommates were slobs... it goes on and on). I stayed longer and longer trying to give myself more time to make it meant to be, and the fleeting positive events became so important, so I could validate my entire life, that they became all the heavier and easier to drop, break, and crush my soul. A wiser person would have known this was a silly way to live.

In fact, a wiser person said exactly that. Joseph Campbell, philosopher and author-extraordinaire, wrote,  

If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are -- if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.

By studying the greatest myths, legends, and religious stories known to man, Joseph Campbell made it clear that happiness is not something outside yourself you must lust after to attain, rather it comes from within you, provided you have the eyes to see it and you steadfastly, boldly, unapologetically follow it. What makes someone else happy is certainly not guaranteed to make you happy; your bliss is authentic to you and you alone.

There's the detour sign! The road I was on is under construction. This is a new way to happiness. It's an internal speedway. Proceed without caution.

My mission in my recent past as a Californian was to get away from Michigan and find what would make me happy, but clearly I was looking in the wrong direction. Ultimately my move to Texas, however rash it seems, or unsexy it seems, or however uprooting it may actually be, is conveniently giving me the chance to change my view and get on the right philosophical track. I'm not saying I'm starting over, because life (if you haven't noticed) is continuous, and even though I don't consider the last 6 years the "best" years of my life, all those crazy San Francisco days and nights brought me to better understand myself, and I'll draw invaluable lessons from those times while I'm in Texas and where ever else I lay my roots.

Now I have the chance to redefine my self by really listening to what makes my heart sing, and I can make decisions that will propel me further into joy. I can work for an organization I trust in; I can live in a place that feels comfortable - that's not a 300 sq foot studio - that I can afford; I can surround myself with positive people who share my interests and values and who will care about me just as much as I care about them. Of course I had this option all along - I could have stayed in CA with this new found affirmative attitude, but it would have been lonely none-the-less. In a new place, it's simply easier to let the mucky, shitty stuff roll off as I cling only to the things that I feel a positive connection to in my heart of hearts. At least I can try to.

The warning sign in this is that it's easy to fall back into old habits and ways of thinking... it's easy to tally up the "good signs" and the "bad signs." In my first week here in Austin, I thought this place was most certainly not meant to be for me - my dad had a heart attack, my apartment was under construction, I got a ridiculous and unjust ticket... but then good things started happening (I got a job!) and I felt a kick of that karmic fuel I'm used to running on. But again, all that was outside myself.

As much as I do believe in karma (so much I named my cat after it), I have to trust that my happiness in this lifetime is not subject to the tally marks of external forces. Bad things don't happen because I have created bad karma for myself. Bad things don't happen because I chose the wrong path and I have to stick to it, either. Life is flexible, and if the path I'm on seems unnecessarily bumpy or lacking in scenery, I can choose the detour, the service road, or I can go in a different direction all together - but that's up to me, not just the external signs I see along the way.

I just finished a book called "Rebel Buddha" by Dzogchen Ponlop, and in this book Ponlop describes the danger of sticking to the same path, just because we think the Buddha said so (and you can apply this to any religion, philosophy, or individual world view). We might think the path to spiritual liberation is a straight line, padded with daily meditations or going to church or whatever practices you've been taught, but that may not always be the best thing for you. He writes, "When a living tradition becomes static, without any sense of freshness, and we lose our basic heart connection with the spiritual journey, it's actually very sad." He continues, paraphrasing the Buddha, "Not looking at what's going on inside can be much more destructive than worrying about unfavorable external conditions."

So from now on my heart's calling the shots, and it's going to drive me to a full lifetime of happiness. It doesn't matter what road I took before, and it's ok if I have to reroute down the line, that's just a part of the journey. But right now, in this very precious moment, bliss is inside me, screaming:

• Trust your instincts
• Think less, feel more
• Say yes to new things
• "Enjoy the struggle"
• Accept your feelings as truth, don't fight them, but let them go like leaves floating down a river
• Embrace your youthfulness... Be curious! Be silly! Speak your mind! Climb a tree! - worry about how you'll get down later
• Welcome silence
• Open your heart... stop holding grudges and spending time with anger, that's all in the past
• Take pleasure in little things; appreciate them like they're big things
• Care for a living thing outside of yourself, whether it be a plant, a shelter cat, or an entire community, or as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child or a garden patch... this is to have succeeded"
• Love
• Love
• Love......

Happiness is an internal journey you take with your Self, not an external destination you can walk or drive to. I'm not trying to give the impression that I've suddenly "found" something, please excuse my preachiness, but I do feel like I'm on the right track now. I suspect I'll be hit by waves of more yucky stuff that will force me to question my personal philosophy and reassess what makes me happy. In fact, this will definitely happen! And I look forward to it, too. Without those bends and unexpected twists, those doubts, those opportunities to reflect and try a different approach, I will never know how brilliant and beautiful my happiness is meant to be.