By: Martin Merritt, esq.
Past President, Texas Health Lawyers Association
Past Chair, DBA Health Law Section
martin@martinmerritt.com
“Please Tell Me you Didn’t. . . How to Keep Clients Out of the Jailhouse, Poorhouse and Lawyers Out of the Nuthouse” -Blog
As you can tell, I love talking about health law & litigation issues, and general wellbeing, if you have any health law questions or better yet, need to refer a case, just call or drop me an email and I will happily talk.
I have been thinking about happiness lately, and how we could have more of it by worrying less. It seems to me that cell phones could be a main culprit, fueling a national obsession called “FOMO” (fear of missing out), which is all about needing to attain the supposed ideal, picture perfect life as a sine qua non of happiness.
This often centers on the pursuit of “stuff we don’t have.” Honestly, as a matter of historical perspective, we are doing pretty well. If you go take a look at Lyndon B. Johnson’s ranch 50 miles west of Austin, or Elvis’ house in Memphis, you will see that what was then the “lap of luxury” a few decades ago, looks so garish to the modern eye, that these homes seem at best like a cheap motel and at worst, as if the Scooby Doo Mystery Machine blew up in Elvis’ living room.
There is always some reason. Maybe that’s a good thing, there is always that “one little thing” we don’t have, or that is just out of reach, which is bugging the crap out of us, that makes us go out and strive, which is a way of having “fun.” The question is, “can you turn it off?” Which is a matter of perspective.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
When you think about it, the very fact that we can each enjoy a living breath, is so astronomically, intergalactically improbable, that might spend our time each waking morning just giggling our butts off that we are here at all.
It is a matter of gaining the right perspective. If we are going to do this, let’s go all the way out into space and look back at ourselves.
The Earth is a ball, and we are stuck on it, floating in temperatures that are so cold (negative 454.8 degrees) that we are living near “absolute zero,” where all movement stops. The only thing that keeps us from turning into freeze-dried popsicles, is that one certain nuclear explosion 93 million miles away, which for some reason, appears to us to be exploding so slowly, that it hasn’t changed much in several billion years. Either that, or God did it the way Genesis describes. (I am staying clear of that argument.)
This thing called “life” gets even more absurd, when you consider this nuclear explosion means the sun is throwing off radiation at the speed of light that would incinerate us like a pop tart left too long in a microwave, but for the fact that we somehow have an atmosphere which only lets the “good parts” of the microwave in. (Go figure.)
The only reason this protective atmosphere (effectively about five miles thick, so thin that Mount Everest practically pokes through it), isn’t blown off by the solar wind is that Earth’s middle is a spinning mass of molten iron, that creates a magnetic field that causes the solar wind to just “just go around.”
The fact that we are here at all is such and improbable gift, you might say we can only cheapen the ride by grabbing the wheel of our “worry wagons,” and frantically steering towards the latest Macy’s sale. (Or whatever is “real to you, dammit!”)
This was the essentially premise of Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, published in 1984. (Skip the movie, read the book) The book opens with an examination of precisely what I am talking about: the number of contingencies that had to take place on Earth, just for your parents to have met so that they could create “bouncing baby you.”
Viewed through the proper lens, we could “let go of the wheel” of most of our worry, and it wouldn’t make any difference at all. But, we probably should try to do the most good we can, for the most number of people.
Quoting Kundera from the book:
“The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness? … When we want to give expression to a dramatic situation in our lives, we tend to use metaphors of heaviness. We say that something has become a great burden to us.
Stated another way, “Life is so absurd we shouldn’t even be here. But as long as we are, we need to have a ‘purpose,’ so we don’t go fluttering off into foolishness.” That is about as close to “happiness” as we can get.