Wednesday 25 August 2010

The pursuit of sadness



So after umpteen self help courses projects and ‘wow’ moments I was fortunate enough, in my late twenties, to realise that happiness is not something to hanker after but it’s our natural way of being unless we choose with our minds or our bodies to feel sad. The tough thing is that even when life is going fantastically well tiny superstitious whispers at the edge of a pragmatic mind exhorts us to ‘ examine the cons’, be realistic, be mindful of others etc. etc. There are a hundred different reasons to get off the happy train and swap smelling flowers for ‘waking up and smelling the coffee.’
The phrase ‘analysis paralysis’ is so apt here as our happiness lies trapped deep in a mental mine that is topped by a hard assed-straight talking, reasonable and practical mountain of data, statistical evidence and counter arguments.
As a young child being happy was not worthy of pursuit or exploration, as in most instances where the basics were being met happiness was a natural state of being, until that first time. The first time a discordant note was sounded in the melody of our life we became aware of the perfection of the harmonious construct that formed the tune of our life and stopped to examine what caused the song to go wrong. That stopping or dwelling started a life long pursuit and obsession with the nature of wrongness and it’s relation to perfection. Until that moment, perfection didn’t exist it just was the canvas, the background we crawled stumbled or slept through. From that moment on we got geared up at the pursuit of sadness store with some highly personalised gizmos to help us on our life long quest including:
-Judge-o-meters-the perfect I’m right you’re wrong nifty portable accessory and vital for any pursuit of sadness mission
-Past master-a view master like apparatus that projects achingly beautiful and lyrical montages of moments from the past to hanker after, in our inner minds eye
-Craporama- Essential eyewear: these High Def glasses frame our minds eyes every morning to help us view our self, the world and almost everything as just not good enough
Reasonator- A statistical device that is evidential in nature, and provides reasoned and logical data driven theoretical constructs to support and justify us in our approach to the pursuit of sadness
These are just some of goodies that are personally customisable at the Sad Shop, a place we all know too well. Many fellow writers and artistes will pick the “Pain-essential” mind trap, that will only spring open to let the ideas and expressions come rushing out, in moments of personal pain.
The pursuit of sadness is what makes us human in the current state of evolution we’re at. As we evolve further maybe sadness becomes as arcane a construct as bear baiting or slavery, but till then we soldier on united and yet strangely divided in a sad race towards a state of happiness.
I would love to know your thoughts on this contentious and very simplistic post and appreciate that there is a huge level of complexity that is being ignored here. I just wonder if the lucky majority who aren’t medically diagnosed as sad, are indeed chasing an ephemeral happiness that they already possess. Answers in the comment box below please.

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