Why Can't I Be Happy?

['You can double click on the cartoons to zoom in on them.]

Happiness is a relative term. This past week there was a Monk show where the main character, Adrian Monk finally got what he has wanted from the very beginning of this long running show, he got a position back on the police force. What Monk learned quickly, was that he hated the job. This miserable man, with phobias out the wazoo, discovered that although he thought he was unhappy, before, now that he had what he wanted he realized he had been happy back when he was sure he was unhappy.

I'm thinking maybe the way to master life, or the way to have a happy life one has to develop an ability to see how we block our own way to contentment. I don't want to be all zany happy. If you get too zany happy they think you are bipolar or something. Zany happy is a 100 yard dash. I want marathon happy, and that kind of happy is long sustained contentment. Marathon happy is being OK most of the time.

Many of us grumpy Gus guys (and gals) grow up without a cohesive and nourishing sense of family, or community, or tribe and, unsurprisingly, we grow into this disconnected, disconnected being. We learn early in our lives that any affliction, and I mean any affliction with family, friends, teachers, supervisors requires that we prove we are worthy. We are under pressure all the time to compete with our co-workers, peers, siblings, and hell, even strangers. We sense an urge to get ahead, to stand out, be special, smarter, better looking, capable, powerful and/or worthy. We grow up feeling like there is always someone keeping score, and we live with a constant fear that we are not winning.

How can you be happy, when you feel like you are constantly being evaluated?

In the Book of Daniel there is a scene where King Belshazzar is having a drunken party and he is drinking wine from holy vessels stolen from King Solomon's Temple. Suddenly a finger just appears in the room and writes on the wall words, but the language is unknown to all, except the Prophet Daniel who translated the words like this: You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting.

The great unhappiness of life is feeling like King Belshazzar.

Marathon happiness apparently includes the skill to stop feeling judged, to stop caring or imagining that others are judging you, and to stop judging yourself.