Session 1, The Sovereign Mind: From Inner Authoritarianism to Inner Liberty
We can discover that a grave threat to our liberty is not just an external autocrat, but our internal “central planner,” the egoic part of our mind.
Imagine you are a ship’s captain navigating a vast ocean. Your thoughts and feelings are the weather. For years, you have been trying to command the rough waves to be calm and the clouds to disperse so you can feel convinced you are a good captain. At times, this universal struggle has left us all fixated on the storms, exhausted, and going nowhere.
There has to be a better way of going through life. I think the ideas in Dr. Russ Harris’s The Happiness Trap offer us one. If you know your ego is selling you snake oil, you can walk on by. Harris exposes the snake oil. He writes,
Our emotions, feelings, and sensations are like the weather: continually changing from moment to moment. We don’t expect it to be warm and sunny all day long, all year round. Nor should we expect to be happy and joyful all day long. If we live a full human life, we will feel the full range of human emotions: the pleasant ones, like love and joy and curiosity, and the painful ones, like sadness, anger, and fear. All these feelings are a normal, natural part of being human.
In an earlier post, I shared the story of the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens located in Delray Beach, Florida. Valued for his agriculture expertise, Mr. Morikami was among the Japanese farmers recruited to work in South Florida in the early 20th Century.
Life was harsh. The Japanese settlers were living in a foreign country, and many of their neighbors opposed their owning land. A pineapple blight, cheaper pineapples from Cuba, and finally, the federal government confiscating their land during World War II dispersed the Japanese settlers.
After World War II, Mr. Morikami lived frugally in a mobile home and was able to repurchase farmland. In the 1970s, he donated his land to Palm Beach County.
The highlight of the Morikami Museum is the beautiful Japanese garden. A visitor will spot small memorial plaques along the walkways, on the ground, on boulders, and on benches. One inscription for Melva Byer Klayman caught my attention: “I am happy with today.”
The Internet reveals few details about Melva’s life. She graduated from Syracuse University in 1942. In 1944, when she contracted polio, the army recalled her husband Lt. Alfred Klayman to be with her. It’s not clear if she had a full physical recovery from polio; but along with her husband, she operated a small movie theater in Syracuse, New York. She moved to Florida and, in 2009, died at the age of 89.
Was Melva always happy? I don’t interpret her words that way. “I am happy with today” means to me that she was not struggling with the “weather” of the day. It doesn’t mean she didn’t adapt to the “weather” when appropriate. She called a plumber when she needed to. Perhaps she visited the Morikami garden often because it lifted her spirits. “I am happy with today” means she didn’t demand that Reality be something other than it is.