Scava ombre profonde

I was thinking, while doing an ECG for my new hip, I was thinking that the ECG was similar to my moods, little peaks and lows, smaller, wider, higher, lower.  I was also thinking of how polarised my mood peaks are, with a high = collect, and low = discard. In the high peaks I get excited about collecting everything, creating, reading, watching, doing, a magical whirlwind of stuff. In the lows, I entrust my memory with all the work, and believe that anything written, anything physical, will choke me more than give me joy. All of these waves are as frequent as the ECG, it's the rough sea of my life, and the more I sail it, the less I seem to know the way. I spend quite some time in these ruminations, trying to convince myself that collecting, keeping, writing down, making, is always good, even when the belief wavers. And I get a shiver of happiness thinking of Leonardo writing about his soup becoming cold, and Tolstoy's diaries, so many that nobody will ever accomplish the task of translating them all. Yet Tolstoy didn't write his diaries for 15 years. 15. OK, he was writing War and Peace, in the meantime, and maybe then watching football on TV (I know what you are thinking). But for 15 years his ECG must have changed. And Leonardo was not always happy, or hardly ever, for that matter. So, it's not about happiness, most things aren't. Perhaps it's about sharing. You collect, you preserve, you share. But then, in the lows, I wonder whether it really is important to share, whether it is even possible. And all the work that goes in it, self promotion, the effort (not much) to be understandable, or just to be present. But in the highs of travel, the exploration of new, old, rediscovered, reframed, there is so much, so much wonderful stuff, that quickly leaks away through the sieve of memory, and it's lost forever. Or not. I'm not sure. Did writing about soup help Leonardo fly?

On Happiness

I was meditatively sipping tea, when the guy at the next table said to his friend in a stentorian voice, "I always wanted to be a chef but I am frightened of food." I wanted to hug him and say, "Brother, soul mate, spiritual twin, I know how you feel!"
I discovered le mal de vivre very early on in life. When I was a small child, a sun ray came through the window. I looked at it, ready to rejoice, when I saw it was DUSTY. I learnt in that moment that beauty was impermanent, that everything gets covered in dust, and that, ultimately, life is a fight against physical and spiritual dust. I also discovered that my mind had a mind of its own, a trickster that created bizarre obstacles, unnecessarily convoluted thoughts, to keep me away from my goals. So, I became interested in happiness, what is it, is it fleeting or permanent, can it be achieved and, most of all, can you achieve it by actively pursuing it. I studied philosophy, religion, magic, meditation, nlp, cbt, positive thinking, negative thinking, not thinking. And decades later, I realised that my mind's mind was still playing tricks and that the world was still rather dusty. I felt that I had dramatically failed, because I had not achieved the wisdom that gave access to happiness. But then a thought occurred to me, "I don't NEED to be happy!" And that, well, that made me happy.
I asked my friends to give me their definitions of happiness, and here are some: a garden; a quiet moment, calm, ecstasy, beauty, making art. Happiness is something very simple, yet magical and fleeting. Sometimes it's just a moment, sometimes it lasts longer. We don't go to it, it comes to us, it's not in a place where you can always access it, the same garden will not always make you happy. Yet, happiness will always come back. But, for how hard you practise, you cannot run away from pain and sorrow, your mind's mind will always be with you with its bag of tricks, and you will always be you. I have not learnt how to be happy on command, but I have learnt to accept le mal de vivre as an annoying, yet stimulating, companion. I don't try to wrestle it to the ground any more. And happiness now comes back more often.