Postcard is a weekly curation of things I think are beautiful or interesting. Each postcard will be named after a word and contain something to listen to, something to look at, and something to think about. I welcome you to share any thoughts in the comments. Thank you!
insanity:
(n.) The state of being insane; madness.
†Meanings from Wiktionary
Something to listen to:
“Y.M.C.A.” - Cruisin’ by Village People
This is, to my knowledge, the only song that properly captures the unbridled joy of setting foot inside of a really, REALLY good rec center.
Something to look at:
Look, we’ve all been here, in some sense of the words ‘been’ and ‘here.’
Something to think about:
I.
A sense of enchantment with the world is a difficult thing to convey with words. The nature of reality is expansive and mysterious. The nature of language is prescriptive. People who have had spiritual experiences often find themselves utterly transformed by them, forever shifted beyond what felt like a fixed and rigid frame for seeing reality into something new—something strange, otherworldly, magical, mystical, enchanted. Something that invites a new way of experiencing reality; a new way of experiencing experience itself.
These types of shifts are inherently challenging to capture with language. When you are talking to someone who hasn’t experienced such things (or has but without being fully aware of them) you effectively come across as insane. "Yeah, I used to see the world that one way, the same way we all did, the way we were supposed to… but now I see it as it REALLY is. Overflowing with beauty and magic and wonder. Don’t you get it?? Don’t you see it too????!”
There is something to be said about the relationship between joyfulness and insanity in the Default Culture. I often think about the “““infamous””” Tom Cruise appearance on Oprah when he was fully overcome with the joy of his love for Katie Holmes, and how expressing that joy caused him to be labeled as ‘insane’ by the sneering media class. This speaks to the power of media distortion: because I can guarantee you that the majority of the audience of screaming, cheering women in that room were not feeling, “Here is an insane man having a manic break!” They were feeling, “Here is a man who is DOWN SO BAD for his girl, and it is beautiful!”
Using the label of ‘insane’ (read: irrational, incorrect, unmediated) for expressions of happiness is a simple technique for culturally policing joy. But when you recognize that for what it is, you get to make a choice: do you fear the label more than you fear a life of shrinking all your happiness, all your joy, all of your LOVE into a tiny box that meets our miserable secular society’s narrow expectations of what is permissible to express? Or do you choose freedom?
A choice. I cannot make it for you. But I can, and have, obviously, made it for myself.
II.
I’ve come to view one of the core threads of modern misery as revolving around this sense of enchantment versus disenchantment with the world. If you are disenchanted with the world, you are almost by definition focusing on negative things. You are focusing on what you do not have. You are focusing on what you feel entitled to. You are focusing on Things That Are Wrong With The World.
Indulge me in a thought experiment: suppose that whether you are enchanted with the world or disenchanted with the world is not something beyond your control, but is, in fact, a choice. A personal choice. Suppose that you have the ability to choose what you focus on. Suppose that you can choose to appreciate the good things in your life and the world without tacitly endorsing any of the following: evil, suffering, misery, pain, injustice. Suppose that joy vs misery is not a zero-sum game and that your joy is not coming at the expense of anyone else’s well-being.
This is an idea that is beyond the frame of the Default Culture. The Default Culture both explicitly and implicitly instructs us that joy is zero-sum, that it is wrong to be happy or joyful when other people are unhappy because it is “inequal.” If you listen to secular liberal-progressives on Instagram and their list of grievances (which would surely put even a CVS receipt to shame), you might start to get the sense that these people will never allow themself to be happy. And what does it mean for your own joy if you are not allowed to be happy until they are happy?
Ah.
When you achieve this insight, when you really let it into your body and mind and heart and think through all the implications and ramifications of it for your own life, everything becomes crystal clear:
I am allowed to be happy and joyful.
I cannot allow someone else’s lack of joy to be a precondition for my own joy.
If I am waiting for someone else to be happy before I allow myself to be happy, I am committing a sort of walking spiritual suicide.
If I am waiting for someone who will never be happy to be happy before I allow myself to be happy, I will never be happy.
I am allowed to be happy and joyful.
The sense of joy I am articulating here intellectually is both circular and self-reinforcing. The idea that you are allowed to be happy, joyful, and grounded in your gratitude for the good things in your life acts as a misery-circuit breaker. This is one of the foundational ideas for your spiritual sovereignty and well-being. Embrace it!
III.
Performative misery about the state of the world is very in vogue. That doesn’t mean it is good, true, or beautiful. It is, in fact, none of those things. Most often, these expressions of misery about the state of the world are little more than narcissism masquerading as empathy. A (self-valorizing) selfishness masquerading as selflessness. And resentment-based entitlement masquerading as justice. But when you are a careful student of history as an actual reality divorced from our politically-expedient cultural narratives about rational “enlightenment” and secular “progress" you understand the truth:
The world has never been made more beautiful by people performatively worrying about her. The world has never been made more beautiful by people feeling miserable. Just the opposite, it turns out. Good energy begets good energy. Negative energy begets negative energy. This is a simple and elemental truth of the universe. A foundational rule of reality. You cannot hate hate into becoming love.
You can only love.
So if you want the future to be as shiningly bright and vividly beautiful as it can be, that begins with YOU becoming as shiningly bright and vividly beautiful as you can be. I can feel that potential inside of you, pulsing, crackling, absolutely radiant. It inspires me every time I think about it. It fires me up with the joy of being alive when I think about it, with the joy of being alive in the SAME world, at the SAME time, as YOU and your ESSENCE. Can you feel it too?!
So come! Gather one, gather all. Let us rejoice together. Let us shout, from every mountaintop, every balcony, every social media post, every coffee-shop conversation and town hall debate and sultry sweet-nothing whispered into a lover’s ear, that joy will prevail!
Oh let us shout: Joy will prevail! Joy will prevail! Joy will prevail!
