An old Scottish Aunt of mine said that certain people she knew were "never happy unless they were miserable!" She was implying in her Calvinistic way that being miserable might not be so bad, probably "good for the soul." Not quite the same recipe as the pop-psychology best seller of a few years back, "Chicken Soup for the Soul!" I'm hoping to offer today neither Calvinist misery nor chicken soup! Of course, whether you cook it or cut it, our goal is emotional health and healing. Recently, PBS has been televising all kinds of inspirational presentations showing the way to health and happiness by various therapeutic and spiritual paths. There's certainly an audience for this and many good and helpful things have been said by a variety of people. In spite of differences in emphasis, the goal for us is some kind of healing philosophy. We must beware, though, that in all the guides to self-help all that glitters is not gold.
I think the most useful book was written by Dr. Loren Eisely which was neither too pathological or too optimistic and brought the discussion of our health and happiness into better focus. Eisely was not a psychologist, but a scientist with a concern for our happiness and wholeness in what Rollo May called our "age of anxiety." The name of this book is THE IMMENSE JOURNEY. What lingers with me after all these years, my own copy has been long since lost or lent, was his identification of Work, Prayer, and Carnival as the three truly vital parts of a happy and meaningful life. These elements which satisfy both our basic and even sensual nature and our spiritual needs. For the sake of our happiness and fuller meaning, our work, prayer, and carnival must be better poised and in balance. More often than not these three parts of our lives are not in balance. When these elements are out of kilter, we, in varying degrees and not always consciously, are unhappy or discontented. We've worked too little or too much. We've partied too much or too little. Or, less likely, we've taken ourselves too seriously, shall we say "religiously" where we tend to be over pious or self- righteous.
There are those who work hard and play hard, but do not pray. There are those who play and pray, but who have forgotten how to work. Where do you and I fit in? I suggest that we're all neglecting something, consciously or not. Let's look at all this a little more closely to help us understand where you or I may be in all this.
First, Work! I think the work ethic of most of us is in pretty good shape, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we are happy in our work. However, it is a material and financial necessity for most of us. It's our bread after all. Serious attention to job and career with all the daily demands and rewards is very important. Accepting the need for daily work is part of a mature attitude for both financial and emotional reasons, not to mention personal dignity. Unemployment or sometimes even retirement, can be difficult for the individual to accept. It isn't just the loss of wages, but the loss of the sense of meaning. For many people, however humble the daily task, there can be no real meaning to life through significant work. This is so obvious it hardly needs stating. We are very close to being a workaholic culture! Work for its own sake. Bit by bit we become censorious; critical of others who do not work as hard or appreciate the work that I am doing and have always done. I lose my sense of humor. I become self-important and judgmental. When others accuse me of over work, I can accept this accusation with equanimity. If you're going to be any kind of 'aholic in our culture, it's safe to be a workaholic! You can even wear it as a badge of honor. Work is the great virtue. No matter that we spend less time with our spouses, partners, children, or friends, it's all for a noble cause. In this situation - it when I'm caught by it - I lose touch with the other angels of my nature - the balancing virtues of play and prayers.
Perhaps the psychological opposite of work is the playful, affectionate, carnival part of ourselves which knows how to let go and celebrate. Genuine playfulness and pleasure which surely comes from the child within us is a lovely thing: parties, movie-going, camping, fishing, if nothing else, shaking off for a while the over-serious side of work is so essential provided, however, that we don't turn play into work or from a desperate release from the fast land rather than genuine relaxation. Real play, relaxed, humorous, mildly Dionysiac, is a lovely thing when it isn't a hectic weekend, but something interwoven, unselfconsciously into our daily lives, but there is a dark side to play. The pursuit of pleasure as a kind of drug or narcotic. As workaholic produces a certain grimness of character, pleasure or play as an end in itself tends to become sleazy or undignified and our relationships self-serving and increasingly superficial. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy and Jill a dull girl, but the kind of play leads not only to extremes, but to distraction, loneliness, and self-loss. "Is that all there is?" asked Peggy Lee in the old song. My life vacillates between work as a desperate virtue and play as a desperate pleasure. It's so difficult to strike a balance between the need to work and the need for recreation which is play and re-creation which is prayer.
Work and play are only two points on this triangle of potential meaning and happiness. Eisely uses "prayer", as I do, not in the conventional sense, but as that elevated and poignant silence -something other than work and play where, within moments of beauty and peace, we reflect again not just on the activities of our lives all these outer and extrinsic things, but on the intrinsic meaning of our lives. That different sense meaning which if only for a moment suffuses our lives in those moments of beauty, goodness, and truth reflected on in silence. Here the poet within you must be allowed to speak. Call it moments of pure faith, or meditation, spirituality, when something like love seems truly central and not just at the edge of our lives, pretentious and vaguely mystical as all this might sound. This is the place and time, if only for a moment,, but our own life is the only life we can truly have - not just someone else's! In the moments of prayer, we ask with new urgency, Who Am I? Who are You? Where do I live? And What's around the corner? In moments of silence and compassionate self-reflection we can, if only for a moment, remove the masks and shadows of our fragile ego, caught in time and within events we can't necessarily control. Prayer is that place where we try to clear the rubble, quiet the noise, that is as much inside ourselves as in the outer, hectic world. Prayer isn't just a state of pious silence or even self-conscious meditations, but the place where we speak seriously to ourselves and take ourselves seriously. Prayer isn't really a task or a pleasure. It's not turned on like a favorite record or CD! Prayer might begin with a good book, a beloved piece of music, a beautiful picture, or an experience of nature - things that are themselves silent or help create silence in ourselves - that is, things which are themselves silent or help create true silence in ourselves. I believe that it's only in silence that I may claim the real aloneness and dignity of my own existence. I'm not talking mysticism. We need silence as we need bread and breath, but prayer has its own dark side. Pursued separate from work and carnival, prayer can become terribly self-righteous, pharisaic, religiously sentimental or spiritually elitist. I've known people who have been one with the universe for years, but have little sense of concrete reality. Somehow each of us has to find his/her own balance in this vital triangle of work, prayer and carnival for even if the kingdom of heaven is not at stake, our humanity is!