Identifying the roots of dismay and discontent

I have been feeling a lack of happiness for awhile. The very noticing of this is of course an essential first-step towards contending with it. Another vital step is moving from blaming the lack of happiness on an external something or other and moving onward to explore what it is about me that is amiss.

Now, I have had many moments of happiness in recent days, don’t get me wrong. I find extreme peace and joy in sitting on the back stoop at 6 a.m. and watching the world meet the morning light. Listening to the call of a flicker and seeing the flight of swallows overhead transports me to pure happy. Glancing over at my husband during a performance and seeing rapture overtake his face brings me bliss. A just-plucked summer blackberry, fully ripe and bursting with sweet earthy flavor stills my heart while I swallow its ripeness, and for a moment I know heaven.

But. More prevalent happiness has not been available to me lately. I believe I am perfectly entitled to feel happiness, especially given the richness of my life, but it has not been present in the expected quantities. And I have been on a quest to find out why.

Now, feeling a lack of happiness is not the same as feeling UNhappiness, although the sensations of the two can easily be confused. UNhappiness has not been my prevailing state of being.

I had only one goal this summer, and that was to restore my printing press and begin to use it. While I have never restored a printing press before, I would guesstimate that I could have my little C&P Pilot press in working order again after giving it 40 hours of attention, more or less. Yet, my press still sits alone in the garage–no fresh paint on its iron, no new oil on its levers.

This languishing hurts me. I mean, it’s just a printing press, what’s the big deal–I get that. But, it didn’t seem too much to ask for, and I find myself resenting all the things that got in the way. And, I find myself kicking myself for not accomplishing such a simple task.

So now I am doing a magnifying-glass examination. Because I see this languishing printing press as a symbol of my missing happiness.

Where have I “gone wrong” this summer? What have I done to contribute to my lack of happiness?

In my quest for finding my missing happiness I have been bumbling about with the notion of attachment. As you may know, I have a great many attachments. The most obvious ones occupy physical space (that entire truckload of stuff from my parents’ estate is the glaring example). The less obvious attachments are to sentiments and fears.

I am well aware that my sentiments and fears can be burdensome and crippling, and I am constantly striving to be free of their weight. I am also well aware that my physical attachments are weighty, and there has been much angst and self-examination about the strength of my attachment to physical objects, including the quest to see how can I reduce the size of that burden without some real pain.

I have long known that my parents taught me to revere physical objects (they were antiques dealers and keen on fine things) and this makes it difficult to toss aside the finely crafted and valuable antiques and rarities which I have accumulated.

But I have only recently realized that my parents also encouraged me to value the potential in physical things. This is a liberating realization.

See, honoring potential is a fundamental aspect of my personality. It’s what I do. The tendency shows up in my history, it shows in my aura, it shows in my astrological chart. I have tried to deny it, to repress it, to run from it. But it is a true and integral aspect of me and is a great force in my existence.

At its best, this affinity for potential is a gift. A gift from which I create, and a gift with which I help others–by reflecting back at them the depth of potential that I see in them. And for those aspects I am deeply grateful.

At its worst, my affinity for the potential of objects causes me to collect and gather too many things that could become–clothing that just needs a little mending, “really cool” collage materials, objets d’arte that are worth so much more than I had to pay for them at the thrift store. And this accumulation brings tremendous burden to my life.

And what does this have to do with my languishing printing press?

Well, even with all this focus on potential, I somehow chronically fail to see and honor my own.

And so my printing press–the one true thing that I wanted to honor this summer–gets shunned as I manifest potential, everywhere but within me.

It is no wonder I am not feeling happy.

Photo by Vamapaull and used with Creative Commons license.

Tagged as: art, attachment, C&P Pilot, failure, happiness, love, rapture, success