How Would You Know You Weren’t Being A Phony?

I spent this past year in Chicago at a job that I can’t say I loved. In July I left the job, moved home for a few months and spent a lot of time thinking. I had realized over the last year that during the weeks I was doing well in my sales job, I felt happier. And if I wasn’t, I’d find myself looking for concrete reasons to be happy– a team off-site or a weekend visit from a family member.

I felt dependent on them for bursts of happiness, brought on only by serendipity. I started to notice that I was seeking externally for a reason to be happy. A concrete event or person to force a change of state in my mind and the attitude of my consciousness’ inner dialogue.

I didn’t like that my mind had started to rely so much on external happenings like these to dictate my mood and headspace. This cycle seemed too delicate.

Also, while home, my parents and I watched this movie about David Foster Wallace—the guy who wrote Infinite Jest (that huge 1000+ page book that came out in the 90s). I’d heard his name sometime before but never really knew about the motivation and struggles behind his writing. His books were bestsellers and some were translated all over the world. Enough reason to feel fulfilled, right?

But he wasn’t. Among other worries, he was obsessed with how his readers perceived him. One of the lines that stuck out for me in the movie was when Wallace’s character says,

There’s nothing more grotesque than somebody who’s going around, saying “I’m a writer, I’m a writer, I’m a writer.

That line stuck with me because it felt familiar in my own life.

How many things in my life did I do because I wanted to be known for doing them and how many did I do because they brought me joy even if no one knew I was doing them? Tree falling in the woods kinds of thing. Again, was I relying too much on others for my happiness and letting that dictate how I spent my time?

Jim Carrey makes a good point on this. You might have heard about his recent alleged “enlightenment” (or to other people his, “going crazy”). Basically, he’s been talking about some unusual subjects lately—things like the fact that he is no longer Jim Carrey and that you are not only you but also the chair you’re sitting in or the cup you’re holding or even that you and the person next to you are one in the same. I know, seems a bit strange. I looked into this more to hear a little more in-depth about what he was saying. I came across this interview, where Carrey says,

I believe that I had to become a famous idea and get all the things that people dream about and accomplish a bunch of things that look like success in order to give up to my attachment to those things. It’s been part of the evolution of ego to spend the first half of your life acquiring and adding or thinking you can add to yourself. And it looks great when you got a cool car and nice clothes and you’ve done something that people admire. But it can never fulfill you, you can never be happy. It’s not where happiness comes from.

There it was again.

Another person who had “made it,” gotten to the top of their profession…but wasn’t happy. It’s cliché, yes, that material things can’t bring happiness or satisfaction, but what about accomplishments that don’t sit on a trophy case, but deeply impact how we make up our own idea of who we are and what we’re worth? Like when Carrey says the part about, “acquiring” or “adding” to ourselves. This reminded me of Instagram bio descriptions I see a lot. For example, ones like

Blogger | Foodie | Photographer | Traveler     or      Design@Amazon | BAMA ‘16 | #SigmaChi

All these labels aren’t who we are but what we do, what we like, who we cheer for, where we studied, etc. And trust me, I was early to the party on this one. In sixth grade, I made my AIM screenname, “ArsenalU2Drummer” because I thought of all the things that made me who I was, the fact that I liked the soccer team Arsenal, the band U2, and that I played the drums were the most important. But how do we decide what makes the cut?

Going back to Wallace for a second:

Everyone is extremely conscious of manipulating how they come off in the media; they want to structure what they say so that the reader or audience will interpret it in the way that is most favorable to them. What’s interesting to me is that this isn’t all that new. This was the project of the Sophists in Athens, and this is what Socrates and Plato thought was so completely evil. The Sophists had this idea: Forget this idea of what’s true or not—what you want to do is rhetoric; you want to be able to persuade the audience and have the audience think you’re smart and cool. And Socrates and Plato, basically their whole idea is, “Bullshit. There is such a thing as truth, and it’s not all just how to say what you say so that you get a good job or get laid, or whatever it is people think they want.

And remember, Wallace was prominent in the 90s/early 00’s—before social media was even a thing! But even aside from social media I remember at the end of high school thinking about who I was going to be in college now that I wasn’t a, “cross country guy” anymore. I didn’t have a label or accomplishments that people in college would know about to define me, so who did that make me?

Anyway, the big question I’ve wanted to find out about myself was this: Why do I do things? I mean playing an instrument, trying to do well in my job, or even writing this blog? Is it because I actually enjoy them, or do I consciously or maybe subconsciously want to add that to my repertoire of things that I’m known for? And if so, was I relying on these external occurrences in my life for an improved perception and further, happiness itself? What was the catalyst behind my desire to begin any new task, skill, conversation and could I even recognize that inner driver?

I read The Catcher in the Rye for the first time recently. I blazed through it in two days, probably the fastest I’ve ever read anything. In it, Holden Caulfield summed up my thoughts pretty simply when his little sister Phoebe asks him what he wants to be when he grows up:

Lawyers are all right, I guess—but it doesn’t appeal to me,” I said. “I meant they’re all right if they go around saving innocent guys’ lives all the time, and like that, but you don’t do that kind of stuff if you’re a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and bridge and buy cars and drink martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides, even if you did go around saving guys’ lives and all how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys’ lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren’t being a phony? The trouble is, you wouldn’t.

This is what I spent a lot of my time thinking about when I was home and over time, and through reading some books, listening to stuff online, I’ve come to believe that happiness mostly comes from within.  Or, more specifically, the possibility for genuine happiness is built upon an internal base of gratitude. So, no, I’m not saying a person, relationship, job, accomplishment, etc. can’t make you feel happy. I’m saying instead, that giving yourself the chance for serendipity and happiness is predicated on your ability to understand that “just being” is a reason to be grateful. To not constantly seek happiness through changes in routine, but to be thankful for the tiny and discreet occurrences that sprinkle our ordinary daily routine.

Wallace talked a lot about entertainment and our eerie increasing dependence on it:

To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe it’s because dullness is intrinsically painful; maybe that’s where phrases like ‘deadly dull’ or ‘excruciatingly dull’ come from. But there might be more to it. Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient, low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention.

I’ve been working on appreciating the everyday through meditation. Sitting in silence for 15-20 minutes per day, with no distractions. I ‘ve started to develop the skill that lets me watch my thoughts float by from a non-judgmental vantage point. Like watching a movie but not taking the emotion of it with you after you leave the theatre. Without having an external occurrence be the catalyst behind my emotional change, my mind has begun to appreciate the beauty of new thoughts and emotions normally hidden by the search for satisfaction or external accomplishment.

Even now after a few months of pretty consistent meditation, I still don’t really know why I do most things. Like writing this blog. Yeah, I feel amazing after I write something I’m proud of and while I’m writing I almost literally forget the things that I spend most of my days worrying about. But on the other hand, part of me hopes that you have read this far and have enjoyed it and give me a “like” or  share my post. I’m not ashamed of that—I acknowledge that’s part of the human condition, the desire for praise and understanding. It’s definitely a process and I’m still seeking that perfect balance.

But overall, I’ve learned to become more mindful in my decision-making and I feel stronger in my choices daily. I don’t depend as much on concrete things, but instead meditate on thankfulness. And I can tell you this: when you are strong and mindful in what you do every day, life gets just that much sweeter.