Thinking through how to enjoy things

So, I'm back in NYC for a few days. I have missed Queens. I'd just begun to feel at home here when Covid whisked me down South. But I'm back now for a few precious days, and everything has obtained the golden aura of lost things: dollar stores crammed with hilarious content, cozy brunch spots, early sun on hidden stone walls, a downright European fresh croissant and macchiato on a quiet church corner.

I dove straight back in to those memories this morning. I found everything just as I hoped to find it, and I really did enjoy it. But what attracted my curiosity was a persistent, small, confused voice in my mind as I did so: "these things used to mean something, and now they do not."

At first, I concluded I was observing the usual cycle of having once experienced a setting while living a certain internal state, enshrining that memory as a high point, missing that setting, then at last returning to it as if to a treasure box. The second time around, the box is equally beautiful, but always empty. By nature, it holds only a present moment, so it must be filled again with whatever is at hand.

When I first remembered this, I went about filling that box again, entering in to the present moment. This had the usual good effect of relieving me of the subtle anxiety of rapidly hopping between past and future moments, comparing and analyzing and despairing, instead of really resting and taking in what lay around me. But while I expected the voice to be satisfied, it seemed to repeat itself as if with a shrug, but a slight furrow in the brow: "there is no more meaning here." 

I probed that thought. It felt as if the story that was missing was the one I once used to weave together my life and even my sensory input into one coherent whole. It amounted to a loss of savor. I realized it was something that had been constructed in order to derive joy and a kind of forward momentum from things, and now that tool was lacking. All things seemed to smile at me less.

But I also recognized this degradation as purposeful on my part. Over the past couple of years, I had made more moves to value the truth as much as it can possibly be valued, particularly with respect to what can loosely be called first principles. I was trying in good faith to dismantle the edifice of this cosmic inner story for the innocent lie that it essentially was -- in particular, the impulse to weave things together as aspects of God, or events as aspects of his love or intentions for me. Love in the abstract experienced the same degradation: the love in our hearts is not destiny, or a promise; it is only the cruft of our sex-centric evolution.

I have striven to bring to its logical conclusion something I began to believe some years ago: if God exists, he exists in darkness. The only way I can understand God to possibly make sense is if he is the God of the mystics, which means accepting that I have no special ability to feel him, above Muslim or agnostic or atheist. To the extent that I seem to do so, I must conclude I'm misleading myself. And thus with all things "spiritual": free will is an illusion, and love is not greatness of spirit, but mere hormonal thrashing.

Meanwhile, it just so happens this "meaning of life" I seek to destroy is by many accounts the foundation of lasting human happiness. That is, at least, if we accept the basic insight of Victor Frankl:"those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'." I agree with the general sentiment and have no doubt that human intelligence evolved to survive on stories as heavily as our bodies evolved to need food. 

One may seek both truth and happiness in moderation, and get along well enough. But to set your sights on the maxima of one seems to require a final goodbye to the other. Frankl would guide us to the maximum of happiness, and give up seeing all things in the precision of their bleak chaos; Buddha would guide us to the maximum of truth, and accept that bleak chaos as the final say.

It may be most appropriate to leave it at that. It's not a problem to be taken lightly. 

But to complete my current thought with honesty, and record things that happen in my life, I will note one further thing. As I completed my meandering walk in Forest Hills, it felt as if I was examining that broken present moment in my hands, like a -- like a what? Well, since I consider potatoes the universal variable -- like the saddest little potato: withered, full of eyes sprouting everywhere, and indeed, emitting a faint stink. It's inedible, impossible to derive real joy or strength from. But it's literally all I have.

What do I do with this potato? To exaggerate: Frankl says eat it, and with each bite believe with all your heart it's giving you strength; Buddha says let it go, and into the trash where it belongs. 

Out of sheer habit, though, a third option popped up: give the sad potato to the God in darkness, in a gesture of gratitude, without knowing if it was ever received.

When I thought of this, immediately the inner voice perked up. "Aha! I almost forgot that solution. That is the only one that has ever worked."

The experience happened separately from an explicit belief in God; the word emerged to my conscious mind basically after the fact. "God" is a label, but the concept was "the appropriate target of gratitude for life," something I found at least in my case to be uniquely positioned to provide a certain concrete emotional utility.

As is my wont, and as previously noted, I don't consider this experience something we should try to draw information from about God or reality. But it seems like a worthwhile piece of data nonetheless.