To act as if joy is reserved for a time in life is to never have any. It's not a place of arrival, but a state of being. To spend any time trying to explain, or exist as a thing is a trivial pursuit. It may bring the joy of process, or allow for some form a discipline rewards. It will not however end. A hedonic treadmill. It's our need to describe what it is, or how we wish to be. To put clean words on dirty problems. To help explain ourselves today for others to see us as what we hope. To convey the cleanliness of knowing. Of having a plan. Of not wasting this time here.
Throughout all this we spend little time enjoy that outside of our pursuit. We forget what it's like to watch the sway of a tree. To see a tulip fight for its sun under a hedge. What was meant to leave fights to be. To meet a stranger again, or to understand the tools of life a little better. We run past all that it is that allows us to be so we may become. It's silly. It's never compelling to say we're pleased with reality, but it's less compelling to have died still hoping to become. There's beauty everywhere. So why not believe it in you, and what you experience everyday.
The long walks, the late nights, and the frigid cold. We get them. Free of charge. The pursuit of happiness, and the sting of pain. We share all of this with whoever they are, or you become. No was is immune from the warmth of the sun just as six feet of dirt is coming for all of us. It's this commonality that makes life joyful. We each hope to make something of ourselves in a world that ask nothing from us. It gives us our food, our soul, and the flesh we inhabit. What more freedom can you ask of it? Just because you can't see what is doesn't make it less real.
We're coming up on a era where to level ourselves will take little effort outside of a co-pay. We eliminate the struggles of being with substances, and those substances allow us to become. This is a grim reality that almost no one sees as such. Our best self is just a moment in time we believe. How can we make it last longer, or get others to see all that we have done to arrive.
Soon my extra weight, moodiness, struggles with being, and gap in intelligence may be solved. You become me, and I become you. My hair gone for so long rest stop my head again. You'll never be able to inquire about all my vulnerabilities. You'll never find out how I tore myself down, and rebuilt myself all the same. What is a reality in that we construct rather than accept. Maybe it's pure expression, or more likely is pure suppression.
We no longer will take the long paths. Never have to face what it is to be. All the discomfort of life we feel that guides who we become. How can we live in this world. How is it this is better than what someone felt riding the Great Plains 500 years ago. We're running from the comfort we find in anonymity.
Reflections
What if joy isn't something we arrive at, but something we choose to notice right now? The tulip fighting for sun under a hedge. The sway of a tree. These moments are free, always available, yet we run past them in pursuit of becoming.
There's an irony in how we live: we share the warmth of the sun and the inevitability of death with everyone who has ever existed, yet we spend our time trying to distinguish ourselves, to become something other than what we are. The world asks nothing from us - it gives us our food, our soul, our flesh. What more freedom could we want?
Consider the coming era where we can "level ourselves" with a co-pay. Weight, moodiness, intelligence gaps - all solvable through substances that let us become our "best self." But what gets lost? The discomfort that shapes us. The long paths that teach us. The vulnerabilities that make us knowable to others and to ourselves.
If you could eliminate all struggle, would you still be you? If someone riding the Great Plains 500 years ago experienced something we've lost, what was it? Maybe the comfort we find in anonymity, in not being measured and optimized at every turn. Maybe the freedom to simply be, without constantly becoming.
We're constructing a reality rather than accepting one. Is that expression or suppression? Are we building something new or running from something essential?