Happiness

Before I start rambling, I just have to say that 2 hour Skype dates are amazing. Arreanna is so nice to set aside some time to catch up and just talk about whatever. How incredible is it that we can see friends and family through video chat no matter how far apart you are? I skyped with Eva once in Vienna (but I wasn't sure if the connection could handle video) but I think Arreanna was the only other person who skyped with me while I was abroad, besides my sister of course. And it was a 9 hour difference. I really appreciate that. (I'm trying to recall when I skyped with Jeff...)

I miss my friends a lot. I finally completed that Facebook note I had been working on for months. For some reason I keep thinking that I hope someone mentions those two notes at my funeral, as examples of how nice I was. It felt good brightening people's days a bit. I have a wonderful group of friends and I never want to feel like I didn't tell them just how special each one of them was to me.

Living at home again is sort of the backdrop against which I compare my life at school (the Mayfield) or abroad (Wien, Bezirk 13, Hietzing). I miss having a roommate or 9. I miss even the smallest things we would do together. I've tried to see lots of people this summer, with success, but it's not quite the same.

It's been a great summer, honestly. I am jealous of my friends at Aspen. I mentioned my delusional plan to road trip around the country. But I really like working with my dad. Babysitting for my sister is a real highlight of my life, even when Grace and Haz run me into the ground. I met Lindsay McCarthy for lunch at TGIF, picked up Lindsey Reymore from the airport and had a quick meal with her at Mellow Mushroom, saw Transformers 3 with Jeff, spent 4th of July at Sarah's barn with old friends, met Amber at the Tin Roof and had a long discussion with her, got people together for bowling, and yesterday AND today I ran into Hannah Simpson, who I haven't seen in over a year. Plus, I've had some fun playing around on Chris' old viola, I built a trebuchet, I got a new phone with Android, and drove to Kentucky to go caving in a national park. I'm talking with my dad about going out to the Smokies for a weekend before summer ends.

So I was talking with Emma the other day and we began discussing our lives and what it means to be happy and live a good life. Personally, I was most happy with myself in high school. I am not kidding, I rather enjoyed myself in high school. I had a solid work ethic, a great group of good friends, I read more, I got my first cell phone and leased my first car, I created my facebook, I still blogged in my xanga, I knew life was much bigger and more complicated than high school, but it hadn't hit me full force yet. Looking back I see how incredibly narrow minded I was. I have grown so much throughout college. I was blessed, but also sheltered.

Going through college I definitely had low points. I struggled with increasing apathy, and at times I fell into depression. I use that term carefully because I know how serious real depression is, and thankfully I think I avoided serious depression for the most part. Every time I feel bad about something, I try to keep a level head and maintain perspective. I count my blessings. There are a lot of them. I have clean water, enough food to keep from going hungry, shoes, running water, electricity, a fine private school education and I have graduated from Vanderbilt University, which is or was a top 20 institution of higher learning, with no debt. In addition to all this, I was able to study abroad in Vienna, Austria, a top city in the world, attend summer music festivals 9 consecutive years, and I have met amazing people and forged lifelong friendships all along the way (friends that I miss terribly). What do I have to complain about, really?

Any time I think I have a problem worth complaining about, I feel like I'm spitting in the faces of the millions of people around the world who have nothing compared to what I have. And then I usually ask myself: so why are you still unhappy? It's not like I'm miserable, but I'm still not very happy. If I'm not happy with all that I have, does that mean it's hopeless for those less fortunate? The answer is obviously no. So happiness has nothing to do with the things that we have, except basis necessities, like food, shelter, and the ability to live free from oppression and fear.

A wise teacher (Mrs. Bowen, who never actually taught me because I never took French at BA, haha) once told me that life isn't so much about 'being happy.' As in, being happy isn't exactly the norm, if you think of 'being happy' as the mountaintop moments of your life. There are mountains and valleys, but a lot of plateaus or plains. Still, I think you can be happy in those places as well as the mountaintops. So for clarification, I shall call this thing I seek 'joy.' You are only happy if things are going your way; you can live through times of hardship with a sense of joy. In fact, I think it's necessary to find ways to be joyful, otherwise our struggles harden us and make us cynical and apathetic.

So going back to my conversation with Emma, she broke happiness down to mean 'doing something well.' One would assume that this something is desirable to the person. This is a simplification of what she said. As I keep thinking about it, her description / criteria for being happy seems to come to this: we have to have a purpose, and our purpose comes from what we do. If we do something well, we have fulfilled our purpose, to change the lives of our loved ones or the world or to become the best person we could be or just to have accomplished anything at all.

Her reasoning reminds me of Nietzsche, the little that I know, in that life isn't about the reason why we exist or what happens after we die. Our reason for being is to be! Please don't quote me on this. Having actually studied Nietzsche a fair bit, I'm ashamed that this is the best I can come up with right now. But this blog is already too long for an analysis of Nietzsche.

In response to me positing that the root of all happiness lies in man's ability to answer the basic question of life: Why am I here? (which of course is tied to the question: What should I be doing with my life?) Emma said that it's not about finding our reason for being, it's more about understanding and accepting that there is no reason. I apologize if that was worded poorly or is misleading. I think she's getting at the school of thought that says we create our own purpose for being. We create the meaning in our lives. And I'd have to get her to explain how that works, because I have had friends explain this line of thought to me before but it never 'takes,' so to speak. Being raised in a Christian home makes this thought foreign to me. But to me, if we start from the assumption that we have no reason for being, no matter what we do, nothing in our lives justifies our existence.

And I think the world is split up into two groups of people: those who can accept that there is no underlying purpose in our lives and that means all we have to worry about is this world, this time, and there are no consequences for our actions after we die; and those who believe that there is more to life than the world we live in today, that there is a standard of goodness against which we will be measured, and that there is something greater than ourselves which gives meaning to our lives, whether it is called destiny or karma or God.

I have always believed that a god existed and created us. I do not believe in evolution and am worried that I will be persecuted for that belief, but I do not buy the idea that something came from nothing and the explanations I have come across have not been convincing. But the question has become "what kind of god created the world and us?"

And for years I struggled to reconcile the benevolent God of the Bible with the existence of evil, and eventually I gave up. I expected God to give me a reason to believe, but all I kept seeing was that I had to believe first, to have blind faith, before I could see. And faith was my stumbling block. How could I know if I was putting my faith in the right thing? What separates this blind faith from the self delusion cult members put themselves through? To discover the worth of anything else in this world, we test it. Why was the goodness of the Bible not able to be tested and proven BEFORE I pledged my life to Christianity? I was so suspicious of it. I don't want to look back on my life and see that I missed out on opportunities and did not live life to the fullest because I restricted myself according to a bunch of beliefs that I held ARBITRARILY.

Because the Bible tells me so. But WHY am I listening to what's in the Bible? Because it says it's the living word of God. And I just take that on face value? Didn't Joseph Smith say he found plates of gold with a message from God on them? Don't we Christians pity the fools who followed him? "They should have used their heads," we say. And yet I haven't found a better reason for us to believe in what the Bible says. But apparently it will all become clear to me, and no proof will be needed, once I believe.

I began to doubt, and I was sick of struggling, so I walked away. And I have been deeply unhappy with my life ever since. Amber, and other good friends, told me that if I wanted to hear God, I should read the Bible. How could I complain of not hearing God's voice if I never read His Word? Even I wrote a speech I delivered at assembly on how we need to read the Bible more if we want to hear from God. But I still have to believe that the Bible is God's Word.

Was I happy in those days because I communed with God and He led me in paths He set out for me? Or was it the ignorance of youth and being raised in a superstitious tradition? Am I unhappy now because I haven't accepted that this life has no extraordinary meaning, and once I understand that I can live my life to the best of my ability? Or, having turned my back on God, am I stumbling and groping in the darkness for the light my eyes once knew?

To end this enormous reflection on happiness and the meaning of life, I outline in brief my study. I must treat the Bible like I would any other book which has supernatural claims. I would love to read the Koran and I have read a great many sayings of the Buddha (Dhammapada). I will look at the history of the Bible. If anything is false, it may still be a great book well worth reading and reflecting on, but it cannot be the infallible Word of God. Then I must read the Bible and judge for myself. Is it outlandish or nonsensical? Why would God be more confusing than He has to be? Is it idealistic and overly simple? Does what is said apply to the real, complex, and confusing world we live in? To be realistic, some of it will be confusing. Any book that claims to be a guide to life has to be hard to understand in some parts, right? This mostly seems to be "I'll see if it feels right." Although I'm open to God making it feel right, that's not very scientific.

So I will focus on what the God of the Bible says about my biggest struggle: who is God and how does he explain the existence of evil? It won't be easy. I must be convinced. That way, my belief is my own. But as I tend to dislike the idea of life without god, I should give Christianity another shot. I feel part of myself recoiling, saying that I am moving backwards. But if God is real, I believe the Devil is real, too. I seem to be avoiding actually reading or examining the Bible for no real reason at all. If it's false, I should trust myself to find it's faults and reject it. I'm afraid of this because I think it'll feel like starting from -100. If the Bible is truly God's word, I don't want to miss out on His plan for my life because of stubbornness and pride. If it's true, it will prove itself. It must.