Doing nothing part xiii: allow yourself to be happy

Resistance, suffering, and the regrets of the dying

To find earlier posts in my Do Nothing series, here are parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. I promise this will end soon(ish?).

Bronnie Ware, an Austrian palliative care nurse, wrote a book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. They are:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

I’ll note that financial independence is a possible cure for all of these. We prioritize working and spending over financial independence because we think we have unlimited time.

We don’t. Time is precious.

The most expensive thing in the world is regret. — Chip Conley

Letting yourself be

That last regret is a doozy: I wish that I had let myself be happier. “Let myself be.”

The implication is happiness is our natural state, but we resist it. We resist by putting conditions on our happiness. We’re constantly evaluating life, making plans, demanding it be better. It’s a dis-ease, contagious and chronic, called “happy-if-only” syndrome:

• I’d be happy if only I had more money or got a better job (if I were more of a success).

• I’d be happy if only I had a better house or wrote better clothing (if I were seen as more of a success)

• I’d be happy if only I found a relationship or if my partner was more ____ or less _____.

As anyone who has traveled to places with less material wealth knows, the first two are untrue. Couples therapist Orna Guralnik says the third is wrong too:

The problems we are in our relationship are simply projections of our internal lives. You want the outside world to change. We always want the other person to change. The outside world to be different. Then, and only then, we will be happy. But that's not how it works. But really the outside world is just a mirror of the internal change we're avoiding. Accepting the outside world is really just a small part of accepting our internal emotional life.

Allowing yourself to be happy is the most difficult thing.

An exercise

As we explored last week, happy-if-only is a trick of capitalism in order for us to absorb the productive capacity of industrialization. Something is wrong, but you can buy a solution. It’s been so beneficial for us, but it’s created a belief that if life is difficult, it’s no good. Perhaps only life experience is the only way we realize it’s not true. Cornell professor Karl Pillemer interviewed 1500+ elderly people and found that they were happier with life than younger people; they were “happy in spite of” instead of “happy if only.”

If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.
—Oprah Winfrey

“Happy in spite of” means choosing to be happy despite all the challenges. And there are a lot of challenges when you get older, like my dad and his back pain.

“Happy if only” pins happiness on external circumstances. We implicitly think that happiness comes our effort or willpower to get what we want. We pass judgement on the world, and our ourselves: this is not good enough. Think of the list of the things you say “I’d be happy if only…”

• I’d be happy if only…

• I’d be happy if only…

• I’d be happy if only…

Now try responding to each of these things with “I’ll be happy in spite of.” Feel the difference? So much of our emotional temperature is how we frame our lives and what we put our attention to. Accepting the outside world is really a part of accepting our internal emotional life. And we resist our internal emotional life.

We search and pursue happiness, when happiness is already resting quietly at home, inside us. Could you, yes even you, simply allow happiness to blossom within you There is nothing to do or undo, nothing to force. Nothing to want.

Nothing is missing.

Happiness-because-of-suffering

For many years, I was happy-only-if. But now I realize all pain has been practice. To find liberation, independent of the circumstances, pain will come. People I love will die. Injustice will occur, everywhere, all the time. I’ll get sickness and disease. And I’ll resist it all.

Dukkha.

But strangely transformation comes from the suffering. As I wrote about last week, I believe my dad find his inner freedom in spite of his back pain, perhaps because of his back pain. The paradox of suffering and dark grace.

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”―Albert Camus

I know some people who are naturally happy, despite the circumstances. They let the entire game happen on its own, unperturbed by it. Lucky dogs, them. Most people (including me) aren’t built this way.¹ It’s through suffering, do we learn happiness in-spite-of, an invitation to look at our resistance to life, our resistance to “God,” which really is just another name for everything.

When we let go of grasping the ungraspable, we realize happiness-because-of. It’s the pearl of great price. I get it, but I don’t. It takes practice. Letting go and allowing happiness is the hardest practice, a dying of self. I’m trying. You too?

Let yourself be. Don’t resist. Nothing to do or undo. Our own searching for happiness prevents us from seeing it.

Grace, extravagant and everywhere.

Despite what you’ve been told by consumer culture, happiness is here, now. Nothing is required of you. You don’t have to prove yourself anymore. You never did.

The dying whisper: I wish I had stayed true to myself. I wish I didn’t work so much. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Allowing your own happiness: it’s the easiest thing.

It’s the hardest thing.

Let it be.

Happiness can not be found
through great effort and willpower,
but is already present,
in open relaxation and letting go.

Don't strain yourself,
there is nothing to do or undo.
Whatever momentarily arises
in the body-mind
has no real importance at all,
has little reality whatsoever.
Why identify with,
and become attached to it,
passing judgment upon it and ourselves?

Far better to simply
let the entire game happen on its own,
springing up and falling back like waves
without changing or manipulating anything
and notice how everything vanishes and reappears, magically,
again and again, time without end.

Only our searching for happiness
prevents us from seeing it.
It's like a vivid rainbow which you pursue
without ever catching,
or a dog chasing its own tail.

Although peace and happiness
do not exist as an actual thing or place,
it is always available
and accompanies you every instant.

Don't believe in the reality of good and bad experiences;
they are like today's ephemeral weather,
like rainbows in the sky.

Wanting to grasp the ungraspable,
you exhaust yourself in vain.
As soon as you open and relax
this tight fist of grasping,
infinite space is there -
open, inviting and comfortable.

Make use of this spaciousness,
this freedom and natural ease.
Don't search any further
looking for the great awakened elephant,
who is already resting quietly at home
in front of your own hearth.

Nothing to do or undo,
nothing to force,
nothing to want,
and nothing missing

— Lama Gendun Rinpoche

1. Babe Molly Gordon talks about her role on the TV series The Bear: “I’m so happy that I get to play Jeremy’s girlfriend and serve the storyline of someone who has unbelievably painful family trauma, and that we get to explore how hard it is for people to allow themselves to be happy.”