The New Year's Promise

Reflections and inspirations

Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

Hello pumpkins,

I hope you are all doing well! It’s a time of year that can be very hard, or very good but exhausting, or just very contemplative, so I hope you’re taking care of your soft little animal with some sleep and some walkies and some warm baths and good books. Maybe some good cheese. Or even rather questionable cheese, as all cheese has merit.

I find myself writing this in a state of…almost wild happiness? I don’t ever know what to do with happiness, so I have to put a question mark after it. But here I am. I’m so very…happy?

This isn’t a constant state, of course. I was irritated when I couldn’t get into Substack just now. And I was anxious earlier, when I walked home from picking up a friend’s Rx from the Giant Iggle and I was thinking about how to square up some rather lofty money goals for next year with what will be a fairly lean semester. Also, as always, the cabal of mordant whisperers that lives in my brain occasionally pipes up out of nowhere to shout out some of my most limiting thoughts.

But if I can pull myself out of those moments—when I remember my Substack’s password or that any progress on my money goal is good progress, or when I can shut up the cabal by thanking it for trying to protect me (even if it’s methods are fucking terrible)—I also remember, suddenly and shockingly, that I am…happy?

There’s that question mark again! One of the things I’ve become most aware of is how much I fight everything nice. I had an experience last week that really pushed my boundaries. I’m a control freak, and a perfectionist, and a catastrophist (or really just an American raised as female, so chances of me becoming those things were pretty high). All of which means that when I contemplate giving up control I envision screaming out my worst thoughts and traits to a horrified audience of loved ones, who promptly tell me, “The cabal is right, you really ARE unlovable and we never want to see you again.”

But I’m aware of this, and dealing with it is high on my list of things to deal with (along with finally making a fucking batch of fucking croissants that don’t fucking suck). So I did something I was theoretically terrified of doing even as I’ve been researching it for a while and I’ve been wanting to do it and I was in the literal optimal circumstances to do it. I decided to be brave.

And it was amazing! But at some point during the experience I realized I was really enjoying it. It was beautiful, and pleasurable, and profound, and then I thought… “okay, but what’s the point? What’s the lesson? Where’s the enlightenment?”

I took a lot from this experience but that moment was, ironically, a huge epiphany. It was this radical example of how much I fight the moment. How much I fight pleasure. Or how I want the profound to come with a quotable takeaway. And how, as I enjoy something I’m already thinking “but when will I enjoy this next,” or “what does this enjoyment mean for future me?”

I can very easily live in the past, or in the future, but it’s hard for me to be here, now.

This is not news. It’s something I’ve been working on for years and I know that this is also part of the human condition and that I’m hardly alone in this experience. But what this moment taught me is that it is something I’ve been working on. I’ve been intellectualizing a process that can’t be intellectualized. I’ve been assigning myself the task of feeling, in a way that makes feeling a science experiment. When I’m walking to the gym and I feel strong and my handsome neighbor calls out a greeting from his auto-repair shop and and I wave back and then I suddenly notice that line of beautiful silver tree on the next block have started shedding their bark, leaving Appaloosan patches of pigment, and then I think about my hindquarters and I go back to thinking about how I’m feeling so strong, and the moment is perfect…and then I think to myself, “A ha! You’ve done it! There’s that feeling! GRAB IT!”

And the feeling goes away.

Of course, it has to go away. In Goethe’s Faust, the bargain that Mephistopheles strikes is not one in which our eponymous hero finds eternal joy. Rather, it’s an augenblick, or eye blink. It’s a single second during which Faust finds contentment, a moment he’d love to have extend into infinity. A moment of pleasure is such an impossible idea to this man who is the embodiment of intellectual craving that he’s willing to stake his soul on the fact he’ll never experience it.

And yet, of course, Faust does have his augenblick. For as much as we are anxious brains trying to protect us from everything that could go wrong, we are physical bodies attuned to senses that ignite at a lover’s touch, or the sound of music, or the taste of cheese (even questionable cheese!) melting on the tongue. Meanwhile, of course, the augenblick is just that—an eye blink. By it’s very nature, it can’t last. The eye must open, and the moment must be over.

So what do we do? Those of us who must write “happy?” with a question mark, because we don’t know how to let go—how do we do this thing called life, without making ourselves crazy?

A few posts back, I wrote about how life is a miracle—that “we’re carbon and space dust, that got an opportunity to eat nachos, so we should be thrilled.” In all honestly, I think I was cribbing from Heidegger there, who wrote (obtusely) about how we should constantly marvel that “the world is worlding all around us.”

And that’s, I think, the key. I think I need to start rethinking how I interact with the world. Instead of “knowing,” for example, my goal should be “curiosity.” I can’t know where I’ll be in five years: what my job will look like, who I’ll be in relationship with and how, what the planet will look like, or even if I’ll be alive. But I can meet each moment with curiosity, and openness. Happiness, after all, loves itself some curiosity.

Then, when I feel that augenblick come on, it doesn’t have to teach anything, or tell me anything, or give me some kind of insight into the future. I can let it be just what it is—a single sweet moment of contentment that must end, but is, in itself, worth the price of a soul.

Don’t get me wrong, part of me HATES this idea. The cabal that I’ve mentioned—all those voices from childhood and society and casual cruelties that live in my head—it tells me all the reasons that I’m unworthy and unlovable and such an imposter that anything other than the tightest control will sink me, like a torpedoed sub. But these cabals we’ve put together like some awful parody of a superhero troop in defense of our tender hearts—ideally we reach a place where we can realize that they no longer serve us, and have to be put out to pasture. But that’s another post, and another round of therapy, so my point here is really that curiosity and openness will not be easy, partially because it doesn’t offer us the things we think we need (security and control). It offers us merely a glimmering hope that with less control, we can experience things we never imagined.

With that said, I can create an environment that invites contentment. I can mostly stay off social media, which always makes me crazy. I can do the routines that make me feel strong and balanced, both mentally and physically. I can even do something I find incredibly difficult, and ask for what I need or want from my beloveds and friends. I can limit my exposure to the headlines, and I can pursue goals that are meaningful to me, even if they’re not world-changing. And I can be gentle with myself when the moment ends, even if I ended it by trying to clutch it to my chest with my calloused little paws. These are beautiful things, and we love beautiful things so much we sometimes pop them, like bubbles. But there will be more moments of beauty, if we allow them to come.

So that’s my promise to myself, this new year. To be more open, and curious, and to try to live here now, where the action is. Not in the future, or the past, or in my anxiety, with my cabal yammering at me. And I’m also going to make some fucking croissants that are fucking amazing, even if it kills me.

Where is Mephistopheles, when you need him?