Happiness returns, sluggishly, dragging its feet

Happiness returns, sluggishly, dragging its feet
Terminal boredom describes the post opiate withdrawall condition better than depression. It doesn't have the self centred quality of depression. That walled garden where nothing can get in or out. But it is a fragile state that grows slowly from deepest winter gloom through patches of joy to normality of endorphins. There's just a hole. Motivation is slim. Exercise of course, is always ones greatest ally against all low moods. And a man needs several miles to walk, twenty or more to cycle, God knows what in a gym. I avoid the narcissist halls of sweat and work for no pay. Besides, nature, rivers, woodland are as crucial as the exersize to draw oneself out of the body and in to the world.
I have wondered, since my AL-LAD epiphany if most of our worries are to do with being stuck in the individual self. As my consiousness spread to the global whole, there was no me, no ego, no self for misery or pain to lie. Ours is the age of the individual. Artists of greater or lower pedigree can sign a napkin and these napkins have a hierarchy of monetary value. The celebrity. The special person. This individuation, creation of mortal gods, has a reverse side. The valueless man or woman. The lesser mortals. The ordinary. Out of the group depression is innevitable.
Yet I can call up that knowledge. That all is one. That as Buddha says I am you and you are me. Our fate is one. We are ripples of the same stream, twigs of the same tree. My consiousness is not special. When I die six babies will be born with more or less the same as me. If we have a purpose it is to see. To suggest where we see community, societal error. Heading now headfirst in to global extinction of so many species and morons like our politicians still talking of growth. Still hoping for more material baggage, I see those who use least, who choose to consume little but enjoy the outdoors, as our heroes. I spent so much time making expensive objects from a tornado of tearing about, using up materials, be they modest compared to some, in the hope of making a material legacy to cement immortality. How futile I see this now. How misguided. I began by making works to make people think. I tackled social issues in my work, not the seventies fashion for innovative construction but elements to take the mind down corridors of conscience. The double yellow lines, the homeless view of the brick pattern of exclusion, not protection. Of the architecture imposed on my sociology economic group not, like most traditional furniture, references to their commissioned homes.
But once a workshop is running it becomes a beast to feed. You do the work that comes your way. And do the wealthy really want reminding that they've stolen more than their share from the pot. I suspect few do. Is it possible to be rich and morally upstanding? I thought up a philosophy that allowed this so I could continue working for a very select client base. Ultimately I was deluding myself. Over four thousand suicides of mentally ill people who have lost their benefits. This genocide I can not condone. So I'm looking for a different way to ply my trade. I will find one.
I began thinking I could be of use in an abundant society making heirloom furniture, or in simple tribal lands, making wooden shelters. A trade that could cover both possibilities. But it just drew me to money. In this country there isn't a way, bar charity, or teaching. I'll sort it out.
When I gave up my peers thought me mad. Few had a consistent, endless supply of high quality work. They dreamed of what I had. And I threw it all away. It is what Jesus would have done.


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