The other day, some DORK pointed out to me that my blog has recently been lacking in that “pep” it usually exudes. This dork. Go over and leave vengeful comments on his blog (I dare you! - he’s a total comment whore). But, yeah - I guess that is fair enough. One cannot be always saucy, non?
Just to assuage any concerns, I am as well as any beautiful girl who is paid to play with cats and eat out of someone else’s pantry could possibly be. So good, in fact, that I have recently been ruminating on the profound value of powerlessness. I don’t know what everyone’s problem with powerlessness is.
I’m lying. I totally get it. I am all about power. Why else would anyone get a Ph.D. at the age of 24? World domination, duh. But, still…
The problem with this tactic is that, as anyone who has bothered to ascend to the top of any particular ladder can tell you, the view is not always better. It sort of limits your options for where you can go from there - like, say, to a good life. Don’t get me wrong, I am OK with my degree. But, it’s never made me happy.
The quest for power is, ironically, almost always it’s capitulation.
I mean that people seek power in the obvious places, and the powers they obtain do them almost no good. What possible good does it do Donald Trump to be able to say “You’re Fired!”? Lording arbitrary control over other people’s lives may be the only fringe benefit of a lifetime a slavish devotion to seeking something that, ultimately, will never make you happy. To top it off, it takes up so much of your time, energy and soul that - well, you’re pretty much screwed.
It’s pretty easy to identify all that. What is difficult to grasp is the alternative. Our culture does not approve of the pursuit of happiness as a life choice. In fact, this is probably the point of all culture: bending the life of the individual to the service of society. Those who comply with societal expectations for self-sacrifice are rewarded with societal respect, but may well lead miserable lives - while those who buck the system for personal happiness are scorned as lazy or incompetent. Most of us come to some compromise.
I think it is human nature to avoid our own sense of being powerless. This whole rumination on power and powerlessness was spawned by traffic. People love their cars because being behind the wheel of a car alleviates our sense of powerlessness. Inside our own personal rocketship we are incredibly powerful. We need bigger cars, faster cars. Young men and teenagers drive like maniacs because they recognize, accurately, that our society renders them almost completely powerless. The fact that Americans are so devoted to our cars, well - you can probably guess what I think about this. And while being behind the wheel of a car can make you feel powerful, driving like an ass doesn’t make you powerful.
The truth is that our attempts to seek power in cars, in aggression, in domination of others, in computers, in knowledge or in personal relationships are delusional and counterproductive. Perhaps we need the illusion of some control to survive. I don’t think so. No one has yet devised a system for this self-delusion which avoids self-destruction. This is the great message of several spiritual traditions - give up. The inability to do so - the tendency to be lured by promises of false power is a frailty of our minds, and the source of infinite anguish as we learn again and again that we are not in control.
Spiritualism might be thought of as a strategy for accepting powerlessness. Buddhism speaks of the enlightened mind using the metaphor of the stream of consciousness. Most of the time, we exist within the stream of our thoughts. We are carried through time by them, and they crash over and around us, sometimes drowning us in an overwhelming torrent. The enlightened mind also exists in this stream, but can, at will, step onto the bank and watch the stream from a serene perspective.
Christians who, like their Jewish Savior, sought to join the poor, and to be humble, get this. By truly accepting that we are powerless over many things we gain the only true power - mastery of our own selves. The only thing we have, or ever will have, is our own life and the time it spans. The only thing we can master is ourself. And the only things which can be gained by so doing are profound peace and happiness.
The only things worth having.
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