the tough get happy

I was talking to one of my best friends in the world the other night, a friend of some twenty years, whom I have known in greatest joy and most terrible tragedy, recounting to me the details of how his mother has months to live and, at the same time, how his marriage is on the brink of its most difficult trial yet. This conversation was hard, and then he uttered a phrase of such poetic poignancy that I have been unable to shake the words. He whispered “I thought I had the most perfect life, Man, I thought my life was perfect.”

I know this feeling, I know this trap. I have been there so many times, without even trying. Because, frankly, I build up expectations without even a second glance. I suppose it is how I am hard wired. Congratulations, you have been accepted into graduate school. Congratulations you are a father. Congratulations you are married. And, Congratulations you get the job. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. I get so caught up in the how my life is going to be, and what is it going to be like, that the reality of it often smacks me in the face. It is scary how the fantasy will seemingly play itself out before me only to be suddenly, abruptly halted, forcing me into the real world, where I discover I have been absent for some time.

And so it goes. I feel like I have been experiencing these frustrations over and over again. That we form these ideas about life only to discover that real life is often very different from the one we imagined. Someone once told me the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. I guess that makes me crazy.

Jenny faced this a similar situation recently, when we discovered at her ultrasound that she has marginal placenta previa, meaning there might be unforeseen complications with this pregnancy, and that, ultimately, she might have to undergo extended bed rest and even have a caesarian with this baby, which goes against everything we have ever experienced in the birth of our other children. It was an incredible shock, but one in which she found the realization that she had formed certain expectations about the pregnancy: that it was a boy; that we were going to move into this house she had fallen in love with and made an offer on, and how we were going to have this beautiful home birth there.

Jenny’s friend wrote this beautiful piece on the difference between static and dynamic wishing in her post, which reminded me of the Bhagavad Gita and Krishna's conception of duty. He tells his friend Arjuna that we typically approach action in the wrong way. We are often too desirous, too self-seeking, and too emotionally needy for the results that we want when we act.

For myself I struggle with these thoughts constantly. Whether in my relationship, or just trying to get through Graduate school. I remember riding across the Arizona desert with my friend Adrian in his 1958 Willies truck the summer Jenny and I were separated reading the Bhagavad-Gita, and being struck by the passage “you have a right to your actions, but never the fruits of your actions” wondering where the Hell I had gone wrong and why, even if the fruits of my action were not my own, and that even if my actions must be selfless, why was it my life still seemed so horribly off track. But before I would succumb to helplessness and despair the Gita also offered this: “Therefore with the sword of wisdom cut off this doubt in your heart; follow the path of selfless action; Stand up, Arjuna.”

It reminds me of this segment I saw the other night on Professor Randy Pausch. If you haven’t seen his lecture on utube, and are feeling a little low, this guy is the caffeine in St. John’s wort. Dying of cancer, and leaving behind wife and children, he delivered his last lecture as a series of parting thoughts of wisdom on what to say when you are about to die.

The part that struck me was, to paraphrase Pausch and the Gita, “When the going gets tough, the tough get happy.” That life throws you challenges, and that these things are never easy. In fact, most of the time, they are impossibly hard, but that, if the challenges weren’t hard, if the people who didn’t challenge you didn’t give a damn about your success, if life didn’t throw you curve balls, then it was as if you had already failed. Stand up, Arjuna, this is your test, designed by your master to bring out the strength latent within you, and who, like the loving midwife, is there to see you through.

Arjuna stands before the field of battle, confronted on both sides by family and friends, to go into battle means that he must suffer terrible loss, and yet in this moment of grief he finds clarity in the voice of Krishna who unfolds the universe before him and shows Arjuna the way to right action. The meaning within the Bhagavad-Gita is that the battle represents Arjuna's inner struggle as he encounters various obstacles on the spiritual path.

So we go through the process of grieving and letting go of our ideas of how the world should be, and when that happens we give up our (emotional) attachment to results in the world, and are free to reorient ourselves around our idea God, or spiritual truth, or whatever, rather than around the fleeting shadows of what we think ought to happen. Finally, all our strivings, as results of our individual desires and intentions begin to melt away into a greater flow of engagement with our own life, we are able to let go and go on, and the universe unfolds God's will for us.