The title was taken from a journal I kept notes in during a Meditation and Compassion course in 2017 at the Tibet House in NYC. It overlays a quote I use frequently when I'm doing crisis intervention work: “What you seek is seeking you.” Rumi. I use that to help those struggling to find calm within their struggle. The calm the they seek is not a single lane highway. It's dynamic. Calm will be seeking you as you seek it. Happiness too.
In my journal for that course I had this note, "As you replace what is present with what you're seeking are you the same person? Does it change your journey?"
Here I am today doing this retrospective of my past examining old journals and notes. Did what I noted, is my journey creating change in me? A durable outcome in my life today? Before I answer that let's look at what was then. What was the 'happiness' I was seeking?
Not sure I was truly seeking happiness per se. I was mid journey in my grief. I took this course to learn more about self-compassion. In a way to be kinder to myself for all the pain I felt after Donna's death. TBH I never consider happiness a goal. Happiness became elusive after her death. Perhaps it always was. I do laugh easily with others. I can have happy moments. Not so much deep happiness.
What I was seeking, as a surrogate marker for happiness, was keeping Donna alive. Not just for me but for others. I did not want to be invisible to the world. To have a meaningful presence in life in the eyes of others. As I write this now I see what I was doing was a means to an end. A posturing of me to overcome my deeply embedded self-worth struggles. All of that will solve the me because others will prop me. Validate me. I missed a truth which I leaned in another mediation class. "Exceptions and clarity are complete opposites. Clarity is seeing things clearly. Expectations take away us away from our path." My expectations were to save me from me. I did not have clarity about the grief journey nor I.
There is this phrase repeated in the film A Bronx Tale, "The saddest thing in life is wasted talent." The timing of this film and how fits so tightly with "What you seek is seeking you." Right now I still can't really embrace seeking happiness. The grief is too deep. I'm too damaged. Yet what I can seek is smoothing of my journey. To not allow the path I'm taking steer me into canyons, rivers, and impediments. To do that is clear today. Just be in my own here and now. Live in my own private Idaho. Take the presumed talent I may have writing, crisis counseling, and do it just for me. Not for anyone else. Or anything else. Fall into the world of this is just for me mine. Allow that to be the happiness I'm seeking. With out expectations from me or others.
Caveat. Am I just being sour grapes? Giving up? Or is this new step for me what I've been seeking. It only took years and years. The brave new calm world of mine will not eliminate my grief journey, my lack of self-worth, or the dark hole I can fall into. What it will do is put those thoughts and writings into a space that is me here and now. Not a space where it's expected to be liked or hearted. Expectations of meaning and purpose based on external reactions. Meaning and purpose based on just doing it to the best of my talents. Learning as I do it. Make it additive to my life and world. To me. If others see it. React to it. Perfect. If not I did it for me.