The other day, I read a blog post about the first nice, spring-like day in Paris (this year). The writer chronicled her day which mirrors a lot of my days. She grabbed a chocolate croissant and sat on a green, wooden bench where she watched the pigeons gather at her feet waiting for crumbs. She then walked around a bit and sat on a different bench (maybe wooden, maybe green) where she watched children riding ponies. Big kids on big ponies, little kids on little ponies. She walked around some more, immersing herself in the sights and sounds of the city: a puppeteer about to start a puppet show, a painter on a bridge, flowers budding in the park. Her declaration was that there’s a palpable energy to cities on those first nice days. I know this to be true. I sit on a lot of benches. I walk around a lot. I witness that energy on a regular basis. You can almost get drunk on it. And if you people watch from a sidewalk brewpub/cafe, you can literally get drunk on it.
Reading her blog, I had two competing thoughts. The first was: here’s a published writer who has over 19k followers and is writing about the very same things I notice, experience, and sometimes write about. Moreover, she’s doing it in a way that feels accessible and attainable. This was me trying to measure myself against a more successful writer and saying, “I can do that.” My verbal flourishes are just as good, my observations just as prescient.
The second thought I had was about how utterly banal the experiences are/were. This wasn’t a critique of her writing or her subject matter but was a critique of my own writing and subject matter. In this vein of thought, I was saying to myself, “big fucking deal, pigeons in the park, flowers on a hillside, children playing at the beach.” These are, quite literally, the pedestrian notes in my phone about how I spend my days and the things that make me smile. These are the thousands of poems written by hundreds of poets.
If the first statement was, “I can do that,” the second statement was, “so what?”
It’s not that I ever thought those observations were unique to me. I’m aware of just how common my life is and how the moments of joy that I experience would be moments of joy for many, if not most, people. In reading her blog, I was feeling slightly inadequate over my inability to do something more with these very common, almost universal, experiences. It’s a little like talking about heartache which feels extremely personal and unique until you realize every musician and artist in the world along with half of the philosophers have tried to talk about heartache. It’s so common, it’s almost boring. How could I possibly have anything to add to this? And yet, like my fingerprints, it’s entirely mine with my unique ridge lines and swirls. In many regards, my observations, my feelings, my experiences and memories are the only things that make my life mine. After all, how else can one define the self? Perhaps more importantly, how might one build bridges between the personal and universal? This is the essence of the human condition – finding connections with ourselves and the world around us – defining, finding, and walking with our tribe.
Reading this woman’s blog validated some of my thinking – thinking which suggests being present in the world is fundamental to how I define living a good and rich life. However, as with most of my thinking on how to live a good life, there is, playing in the background, a constant and low-frequency hum of incompleteness and mild discomfort. In that discomfort, I’m usually asking, what else? I’m usually asking, how do I build on this? What else could I be doing? What haven’t I explored? I’m often trying to envision how does a good and rich life get shared, and why is sharing necessary? Through art, through friendship, through love, through community? Who else is sitting on these benches with us? Who else in this world (or my world) is enamored by the way the light filters through the leafy trees? Who else appreciates and revels in these moments in ways that I can recognize? If we are social beings (some more so than others), who is in our tribe – be it a tribe of one, a select few, or many?
Aside from not having a job, and not being very happy with my writing habits (or lack thereof), I feel as though I’ve established a good foundation for living the life I would like to live – a life open to possibilities, a life I suspect I’ve always envisioned: good food, ample sunshine, vibrant culture, coffee on a park bench while listening to the Starlings click, sing, warble, and whistle. (And sorry, I just had a vision of tiny birds in tiny suits with tiny briefcases in a bird-sized office full of dark wood with gold script on the glass pane door of the prestigious bird law firm of Click, Sing, Warble, & Whistle).
Silly aside aside, the low-frequency hum tells me this is good, but there’s something else. The low frequency hum of desire blends soft songs of longing with the strut-filled and confident groove of living in the now. It is a frequency that buzzes with the static-filled question of whether or not I’m living the life I envisioned in my happier moments? Have I become the person I had hoped to find? Am I providing for myself most of what I need? It’s a frequency that reverberates between “hell yes, this is it” and “but I also thought that other thing was it.” I’m sorry if that’s cryptic… but I’m often stuck trying to name the good things. I genuinely enjoyed the life I had in Bucks County. I enjoyed the people I worked with and being close to friends and family. I was enjoying life before I got engaged and even more so after I got engaged. I loved rambling around Philly and the adventures I thought we would have. When that ended and I moved, I enjoyed living in Memphis. I rediscovered live music, amazing sunsets, and the value of long walks – but my job made me pretty miserable and I hadn’t been there long enough to build close friendships. When I moved again, I had mixed feelings about it. The job in State College was challenging but not always in a good way. I hated the weather and how little there was to do there, but I made new friends who I adored. Here, I don’t know what the job situation will be like, I don’t have friends or a social circle, but I love the weather and I have a ton of things to do (almost too many).
The other day, a woman I know (one of the people I met on my long road-trip out here) asked her network of Facebook friends what cities seem happy – where are there happy people? She’s in the process of starting over and she’s looking for her tribe. I shared with her that the people seem happy out here… but also that I might be experiencing a form of confirmation bias. When I’m in a good mood (which is often), I notice the happiness of others. When I’m not in such a good mood, I notice the callousness and misery of others. Nearly every day, I see how happy some of the tourists are as they take in the beauty of the bay… and nearly every day, I listen to how status-driven and obsessed with money and material things some of the locals can be. In a good mood, I’m happy for the tourists and I feel a sense of kindness and pity towards the disgruntled locals (if only they could appreciate what they have). In a bad mood, the tourists are in my way and stupid, and the locals are vapid capitalist pigs who have more than most, yet never enough. Of course, both exist and both stereotypes carry versions of truth in them. It’s my perceptions that color what I see and how I feel. This woman and I exchanged a few texts. I sent her some pictures of the scenery, a video of people playing drums and dancing in a drum circle in the park, a video of people rollerskating to a DJ in a different part of the park. I said, I think the sunshine and the scenery makes a big difference in people’s dispositions. This is just some of what I see on a daily basis:
What I was really trying to suggest was for her to find a place (not necessarily geographical) where she might experience joy more often than not. I wanted to suggest to her that happiness (a word I’m not fond of because it implies a long-term state of being) is an internal process that’s heavily influenced by external forces. Jobs, relationships, weather/scenery, community, and activities can all bring us levels of joy and misery, and getting clear on what works for you and in what context seems to make all the difference. If we’re lucky, we get clear about, and find joy in, many domains at once. For me, I know I desire sunshine, proximity to activities, proximity to art and culture, and ways to observe (if not participate in) humanity and nature. The depths of those needs varies on what else I have going on in my life. In a committed relationship, or surrounded by friends, or lost in a book, I need fewer of those things.
I’ve spent the last five years trying to understand this. I’ve spent the last five years mixing and matching and exploring (sometimes with intention and sometimes through circumstance). Because I want to live an intentional life full of joyful moments, I’ve worked at understanding and possibly “maximizing” my sense of joy, happiness, wonder, or whatever you want to call it. I frequently ask myself, how I might position myself to be astounded. How do I position myself to experience more joy? How do I reduce stress and misery? I’ve tried to study other people and what makes them happy. I’ve tried to understand my own “needs” in terms of external vs. internal stimulus, introverted vs. extroverted lifestyles. Having once been told that I relied too heavily on other people for my happiness, I tried an isolationist approach to see if I could discover things that bring me joy in the absence of others. As much as I would like for there to be a formula for “happiness” (people have been trying to bottle and sell this for eons), I’ve concluded that it’s an ever-changing mix. If we’re lucky (by which I mean not so saddled with the daily grind that we can’t imagine anything other than treading water) we get to be the mad scientist experimenting with the chemistry of our own lives.
When I started this particular blog post, I was being half-honest about the two competing thoughts and the low hum frequencies of a third line of thinking. I read a woman’s blog and thought “I bet she and I would get along” – or at least we seem to define a good life in similar ways. I began to wonder if two people can be too similar? I began to wonder if negotiating differences is a vital part of growing together in an opposites attract sort of way. I also thought about the things I enjoy now that I’ve enjoyed in other phases of my life, other relationships… were they always there? What have I kept and what have I let go? I didn’t always like being slow and purposeful. I used to pay more attention to sports and getting ahead. Now I appreciate the simplicity of wine, cheese, and bread before a good meal; being by the ocean or water; travel and exploration; seeing art and listening to music; being out in nature; people watching; sitting in the warm sun with a cold beer. How did I come to value these things?
And again, I don’t think these pleasures are terribly unique to me or to my relationships, but they do hint at a type of compatibility in how one walks through the world. Having been on the dating scene as often as I have, having restarted and re-examined my life a few different times in the past few years, I’ve become more aware of how people choose to live their lives and how I think I’d like to live mine. Moreover, while being open and adaptable to other ways of living seems to have benefits, I suspect one won’t swing wildly from one perceived ideal to another (while still remaining true to themself). There are countless ways to live a life, and none of them are wrong. There are the adrenaline junkies, there are the zombies, there are the people obsessed with material things, there are the people who live through their children or are incredibly attached to their extended families, there are the folks married to their jobs, there are the hermits, the boozers, the wanderers, the loners, the nature-lovers and city-dwellers, there are the society types and the vagabonds, the gamblers, the intellectuals, and the lovers and fighters. How can one define their tribe without some experimentation and a deep examination of who they are, what they need, and what they’re willing to part with when life doesn’t work out as intended and compromise is required?
Though we’ll never meet and probably never talk, the woman in Paris and I seem to share some of the same values. My Facebook friend and I share some of the same values, but we have different philosophies around manifestation and purpose. I suspect my ex-wife and I value some of the same things, but differ on quite a few others (appreciation for food – yes, traveling around and people watching – maybe not so much). My ex-fiancee and I shared a lot of the same values (or so I thought). And that was part of the low hum noise I sensed as I started to write this… In some ways, I live a very different life than the life I lived with her. In some ways, it feels like I’m living the life I had thought we both wanted. After all, she was the one who suggested I’d be happy in the Bay Area. But because she said she hated the way we lived together, I feel as though I lost a few years in trying to re-calibrate… I felt stuck in trying to answer the unanswerable. Was the vision wrong? The execution? The timing? Because there were no answers, because hating the way you live with someone could mean chores or money or world views, and because she gave no specifics, I bounced around and questioned everything that I thought I knew about what I wanted, with whom, and why. Sometimes, like in the composition of this post, or in the recognition of another kindred spirit on Facebook or writing a blog, I’ll wonder if my exes would like the type of life I live now or if maybe we weren’t really part of the same tribe with the same vision.