Be Happy
Like a Bobby McFerrin tune
I got a revolutionary concept. More so, an incendiary one. Put it Paul Revere’s cap, nail it to the door with Martin Luther’s hammer.
It is top secret magic voodoo every day, super powered, wang-doodle and comes with a side of cheese sauce! Use it to spit in the eye of autocrats.
Experts all agree. It boggles the mind of oppressors. It even has been known to short circuit all cosplay, tiny dicked ICE meathead motherfuckers.
And the best part? It is not even a concept. Concepts are academic. Esoteric. What I am talking about is applicable daily. And the best part of the best part?
It is a choice. It is well within our power, dependent on nothing, even accessible during days when we get bombarded - by design - to spin out, go numb, or get angry because of the foolish and evil insanity of a regime of kleptocrats. Ready for it?
Be happy.
I know, it’s a stretch. I know there’s a lot out there to make us unhappy. The world seems hell bent on driving us nuts these days (at the very least). And it seems, to me at least, the powers that be want us incapacitated, want to rob us of our presence, and our awareness. And so erode our sense of hope. And in so doing, forfeit all perspective and become vassals to the whims of corrupt power.
That’s why I say happiness is rebellious.
I know there’s a lot of yapping about the elixir of gratitude, as there should be. And no offense to gratitude - cultivating happiness is the real inciting action. You want to do a little part to fight a regime of dunces? Then be happy.
It has been tested in labs and studied by neuroscientists who say being happy, essentially, is the key to being happy.
But besides that non-linear equation, I think it has many transformative benefits for our health, well being, and the world at large. For example, it cripples dark forces. It insulates one with protective armor of fluffy awesomeness to prevent our direct exposure to the toxic chaos of our times. And it does all of this, and more, for free. It is even sustainable and has a carbon footprint of zero.
Being happy takes nothing, costs nothing, and demands nothing. It is independent of circumstance and generative. It is non-denominational, open to all women and men, and It’s also battle tested. Even better - it not only operates in rough seas it thrives in them. And the best part? It works in an instant. Faster than anything you can shoot, snort, ride, steal, gamble on, fuck, drink, or smoke. Try it right now.
“But wait, Matt, hold up here, you want me to just be happy? I mean, I can go with contentment, and don’t you know happiness is fleeting, yadda yadda.”
Of course it is. Everything is. You know, impermanence and all that.
But like isn’t it true, once you accept that shit, you instantaneously become slightly more happy. No?
Okay. Try something. Just smile. I’m serious. Smile. Be like those Bodhai order of monks. They literally make smiling and laughing their spiritual practice!! Their path toward enlightenment. Neuroscientists back it up. If you actually smile or if you want to really be daring - laugh - you will actually start feeling the chemicals associated with being happy. Just by doing it. You don’t even have to mean it, or have a reason. Just do the physical act. Fake it.
But wait! “Dude, I have depression, I have anxiety, I take meds, I am grieving, I have trauma, I’m waiting to find out about something or other - etc.” Yes and to all of that by the way. But I hear you. First of all, I’m not at all a professional, but good for you that you are aware of that stuff and have the stones to share it, accept it, and keep doing the things that help you manage it - but still, I just want to open you up to the possibility that it is possible to be happy and depressed at the same time. That things can co-exist. WTF, right?
Maybe, just maybe, my feelings, circumstances, states of being don’t have to be in conflict of opposition. Or in collision.
Maybe it is, as they say, a choice. Sounds like a paradox? It isn’t. Not in my experience. You don’t even need Jesus or Spock or Coach Ted Lasso or Stephen Hawkings. I can be happy even if I owe money, am not getting laid, haven’t had potato chips, or have a sore lip. Even if I’m sitting in a world of compound challenges. Even if I feel there is no way out of whatever situation seems to be hovering over everything. I can still choose to be happy.
How?
Me? I Laugh. Yes, laugh. -d knows there is a LOT to laugh at in our world today. I can even laugh at that which is absurd. And g-d knows our world is full of absurdities today, too! Me? I laugh at the utter yahoo of it all. The way truth is getting outsourced and split and I laugh at the fact there is no sense of shared experience that is the foundational element of any creative expression reaching an audience. I laugh at the way all art must be monetized to have value, only to be exploited on the backs of our brightest and greatest, profiting only those who don’t make it. I laugh at our human condition, the Catch 22 of insurance, I laugh at the fact that climate change still hasn’t caused enough pain to force a net positive tipping point. Laugh at our own exceptionalism. Laugh at what Ecclesiastes says about everything being meaningless. And you can laugh with me right now. We can Laugh at Trump. Laugh at Rubio. In his lifts and his cocaine. We can Laugh at the way they try and reframe civil rights as DEI and then weaponize that new rebranding and feed it back to us to dismiss our own inalienable rights. Or we can simply laugh at the way we burn up hectares of old growth forest to make AI videos of our dogs playing piano to keep us from feeling our own emptiness. Laugh with me that somehow it is possible for our elected president to support protesters in Iran but want to bring in the Guard to Minnesota and call it an insurrection domestically. Laugh at the way you think moving to Canada will help. Laugh at our own folly. At the way we still believe we were ever righteous and good as a nation and can’t reckon with our past.
Do it. Laugh at that which you hate. Fear. Etc. Try it. Anger can actually be a conduit to melt and resolve and blossom as happiness. It’s elemental. It is built on laws of mechanics. It will emerge. That much I know.
And trust me, I don’t know much. But maybe it is true that we are all different in how we experience misery but maybe it is also true that we are all the same in how we experience our happiness.
Isn’t that what the bible says? We must be like children to enter the kingdom of heaven. And isn’t it also true that heaven spreads upon the earth and man does not see it?
We are all blind after all, I guess. Till we are not. One by one. We awaken, little by little, and nudge each other awake to some greater reality spread out among us always.
Maybe it is true that everything can wait except our pursuit of enlightenment. Or if you prefer- our pursuit of happiness.
There is it. The rub. The often misdirected connotation of a phrase so important it was put into out Declaration of Independence even before we were a nation with rules and laws to govern it or us.
It was thought that important to be included.
It is a right. A fundamental right. But this pursuit of happiness has been taken to mean a quest for acquisition. For property. For security. For everything but happiness. All too often. So it seems.
And pursing many of those things will usually produce the opposite intended result. But let us look again to the words themselves. Seek their own meaning in the indentations of our finger tips:
The — pursuit — of — happiness.
We can pursue it today. At the very least it might just distract us from that evil which wants to rob us of our own sense of autonomy. That thief of joy which bombards us on social media or on the airwaves, or in our own heads. So find it. Pursue it. Heck, it is my experience that I don’t even have to find it. I just have to seek it.
And when you find your own one day, maybe - if even for an instant - you might learn, as I have, that it is the greatest panacea / foul weather /get out of jail free card that has ever existed.
It is that which Walt Whitman meant when he said he sang songs of himself. And that was a man who sawed off legs and arms in a civil war hospital tent. Roamed the battle fields with a stretcher or a wheel barrow. In search of the suffering.
To know happiness one must know sadness. That isn’t an original idea. I know. News flash: none of this is. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t has to be restated for us from time to time to be understood. We forget it. Especially in times like these. We shuffle off the critical life affirming charge to be happy and wonder why we are sad.
That is why I commit, and swear an oath to it. Tattoo it to my eyeballs. And maybe that is why wisemen and women from our past say again and again we must we put this above all else? Not just because it gives one immunity. Or makes us feel stronger. or Invincible against forces of political insanity and pain and horror. Even as tears roll down your face and carrier strike groups gather in the Caribbean - we can rally behind it. And remember it is our fundamental right. And sadly, a thing we all too often give away for nothing to those less deserving and at great cost. It is a an act of reclamation to retrieve it.
And how do we get there? Where do we start?
I am not expert. But what has helped me is to be kind.
It started for me when I realized that being kind to my community felt like a rebellious and constructive act after Trump fuckery took over again and knocked down the east wing, renamed the Kennedy Center, and so on. It helped me to simply choose to be kind. It somehow made the news better. And then somewhere along the way, I realized I was just a little happier. And just a little of anything good goes a long way. Ask any sailor or pilot. Or astronaut.
That’s the thing about minuscule adjustments repeated over time. A tiny shift in navigation by a fraction of a degree can mean the difference of thousands of nautical miles off course or closer to our objective as we plod along. Little adjustments pay huge dividends.
“Row row row your boat / gently down the stream. Merrily merrily merrily / Life is but a dream.”
So before I go - a few more words about how I translate this concept and implement into action. (Remember that thing I shared about how useless concepts can be).
This is just me, you can add to your own, or etc:
Sometimes I pretend to have an imaginary hool-i-hoop. Sometimes I listen to James Brown or P- Funk and dance it out. Sometimes I turn on Warren G or listen to the Grateful Dead. Or King Sunny Ade. The Talking Heads. Sometimes I try to make someone else laugh. Especially someone I love. Sometimes I walk my dog. Or cook an omelette. Or watch Richard Pryer.
It works every time.
That’s why the greatest expressions of joy always comes from people who have known the hardest of suffering. Ask The Irish what they know about it. Ask yourself where Afro-cuban beats, cumbia, the blues, bluegrass comes from, socio-economically speaking?. Heck, Beethoven’s Glorious 9th is an act of utter act of defiance against the rising forces of nothing consuming it all - the climax of which we know as the Ode to Fucking Joy!
It takes balls and ovaries to stand up to the abyss and proclaim I will not let these fools steal my damn happiness, at any cost. I will dig my heels in, spit on my hands, and stand arm and arm and defend this position from the cavalcade of assholes and tech bros conspiring to make us believe a lie. They do not, cannot, will not, ever own hat part of me which is entirely free and of spirit.
Knowing that fact makes me happy. It gives me ballast and purpose. It fills me with happiness from my pinky toe to the top of my head. It is the single most defiant thing one can do - to fuck Trump. It lets us persevere with a calmness and a steadiness. That is why it is at the center of every great social movement. At least the successful ones. It helps us keep our eyes on the prize. To cultivate that place that is untouched by evil.
Doing so, even a tiny bit, even when we don’t know how or where to begin, gives us courage and faith and hope and works even when it feels like god is far or nowhere to be seen. Or felt. It connects us to our own humanity. So be happy.
It might just save democracy.
Me laughing at the best barbacoa I have ever had. And the blue tortilla.