The Closets Are Still Full

It doesn’t seem to matter how many closets we have or how big they are.  They are always full.

I wonder if the same isn’t true about unhappiness, desire, disappointment. We always want something we don’t have, or complain about the latest disappointment. And if things change to give us what we want (or thought we wanted), it doesn’t take long at all for us to fill up that closet with something else we want and are deeply troubled or disappointed that we don’t have.

The brain is an amazing organ. We’re beginning to understand its awesome power to interpret and filter huge amounts of data into useful concepts, ideas, perceptions.  If it isn’t useful, the brain conveniently filters it out so that we can focus on what might truly ‘help’ us.  I can’t help but wonder if there is such a thing as objective reality out there, or do we simply create what we need out of thin air.  Sometimes we create a version of reality that we desperately need at that moment, even though that version is clearly unreal in many aspects.  But it gets us through the day and on to the next.  Or so it seems, anyway.

If the brain can do all that, it must be burdened with considerable overhead from the stresses of continually constructing and reconstructing a useful reality.  Somewhere we do know more about what’s really out there, and it takes effort to keep it from our conscious thoughts.  We know but we don’t want to know.  Maybe the brain necessarily has its own agenda; maybe that agenda is the source of its power and its limitations.

Perhaps part of that agenda, or part of the resulting overhead from the burden of creating and executing the agenda, is a fixed space for unhappiness.  Maybe we need someone or something to blame.  Maybe we need something to strive for.  Or maybe the construction and continual maintenance of the conscious reality we build is so costly that we’re just plain tired and need relief from the work.  Do we just long for a rest from the burden, a time when we can just be?  And perhaps that longing is deeply unconscious, so much so that we feel compelled to pin assorted aspects or our ‘reality’ onto it so that we can at least have a way of naming it.  If so, it would make sense that if the superficial need or desire is fulfilled, we would just replace it with others.  The closet of unhappiness remains full.

Full at least until we give ourselves a break from constructing and maintaining our conscious reality.  Religion can help us trust in the unknowable and relax a bit in our faith.  Just getting old enough to realize that almost all of life is ephemeral can also help.  If our reality construction job has to proceed, fine, but maybe we can go about it with a healthy dose of cynicism and with less short-term desperation than we did when we were younger. All the world's a stage, so let's do our best to enjoy the show.

It’s all artificial, and once we realize that we can invest our energy a little more wisely. The closets will indeed be full, but perhaps we can be less troubled by that.  Maybe that will free us to act more compassionately towards others because we realize that our own unhappiness may be inevitable but is also quite livable, and maybe even has its own charms.  It’s part of who we are, and we can learn to embrace it.

Or is this all my own peculiar brand of self-deception?