Happiness vs. Happen-ness

How close those words are in sound and spelling yet so very distinc˜t in the souls of those with young or non-existent faith. In other words, how can we be consistently happy if what happens to us often makes us feel unhappy? Certainly death, itself, is seen (at least in our culture) as the ultimate unhappy event and yet we all know we must face it at some point. The question, then, becomes, How can we live life happily when the certainty of death looms in the future? What is the point of living if it all ends with nothing more than my death? I believe that what Kropf is saying at the beginning of his book is that we do, indeed, risk a meaningless existence if our life consists of nothing more than a frenzied attempt to somehow avoid death or non-existence.

I still grapple with trying to find meaning in (or meaning to) my life on earth while I know, for certain, that it will someday end. I ve chosen, here, to begin examining my own development of this understanding by remembering my own ideas of life and death. My mother, undoubtedly, has shoe boxes in her att ic filled with my early drawings of what I was certain was a literal representation of Heaven. (My almost four-year-old daughter, Emmy, illustrated this same phenomenon last week when she asked me if we could go to heaven after church to sing and have cookies) I later prided myself on my ability to distinguish the idea of Heaven, with pearly gates, harps and angels, as merely a symbol of everlasting life. In fact, I saw myself as downright precocious in my ability to reject the Sunday School literality of the Eternal Kingdom . However, looking back, I still retained the notion (or at least the fervent hope) that there was some kind of existence after death; not necessarily that I would exist in human form but that I would retain human consciousness. Further, not only would I be conscious but I would have my own consciousness carried over from my previous life complete with i ts memories, relationships, values, etc. Later in college, when confronted with the idea of existentialism, I thought it would be pretty neat to reject the whole idea of any eternal life. You live, you die, that s it, too bad. (Of course, being 17 and newly independent, this avenue of thinking was appealing for its shock value as well...) Predictably, I wasn t able to genuinely embrace the idea of eternal nothingness for very long and was faced once again with the task of finding a more comfortable belief regarding my fate. ( It should be noted that I continued to worry about my fate, still never considering that anything in my life could be more monumental or meaningful than my own living or dying.) I had thus far not come anywhere near the self-transcendence that Kropf speaks about. In fact, I was still quite entrenched in the idea that I could dictate my own prescription for happiness, assuming it was fairly reasonable. The flexibility that we spoke about in class was not there and I figured that if I just decided what I had to have and prayed hard enough, it would have to happen. I still had the bothersome thought of death nagging in the background but, by god, I was going to have the earthly life I wanted even if it did kill me.

I thought I had it pretty well under wraps; I was doing the right things, I wasn t drinking (too much), I wasn t smoking (at least while asleep), I was going to school, had a nice part-time job and was reasonably kind to people. I was quite satisfied that I had surpassed Freud s pleasure principle and was concerned with more meaningful things (getting a degree, winning my boyfriend s commitment, having good friends). I was well on the way to self-actualization and had a true drive for self-determination (Adler).

Why, then did the idea of death still haunt me? (Perhaps the fact that I used I 10 times in the last paragraph would begin to( lead to a clue...but for now, I had to construct another image of the hereafter.)

I began to develop the theory that after we die we would have total knowledge, a full realm of emotion, be fully integrated in mind and soul and would be one with the universe. Of course, we wouldn t have the same type of consciousness to which we had been accustomed but we would not cease to exist.

Again, all too soon the nagging doubt crept in. After all, no amount of belief could absolutely prove,

beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there really was anything after this life. I still had a hunger for a guaranteeof immortality because like Unamuno believes, I could not conceive of nor tolerate the idea of not being .

It took me thirty (something) years to begin to realize that the quest cannot be for the perfect idea of immortality nor can the idea of living forever be a motivation for one s actions on earth. I had to begin the attempt to transcend myself and my thoughts about death. Sure I had solid goals but those goals failed the test of ultimacy (Kropf). My life was pretty good although it still ran the risk of being completely meaningless in the face of death. [ ....Narcotics cannot still the Tooth that nibbles at the soul . (Emily Dickinson, ca.1882)]

Kropf talks about the very powerful concept that our idea of existence must be directed beyond ourselves. We must transcend ourselves to the point that we become more than what we are . He goes on to ask How can there be self-transcendence without there being a tran~scendent meaning beyond that which we make up in our own minds? In other words, if we are not humanly capable of understanding what lies beyond us, how can we be comfortable with and accept it?

Although I still have a lot of growing to do, I m beginning to realize that I not only have to cease being obsessed with my own existence and immortality but to relax on the whole idea in general. (Perhaps the existentialists were right after all.) Rilke states ...the eternal and mysterious will not be bent by us...His growth is this: to be deeply defeated by the ever-greater one . I understand this to mean that there is an ultimate meaning and it is too great for me to fathom ( if I could fathom it, it would then cease to be great). With the help of Victor Frankl, I m beginning to see that the only answer lies in trusting that there is an ultimate meaning. The answer is Faith.