ON FEELING GOOD

Our fundamental problem as human beings is making ourselves feel better, and since we are such complex creatures, with so many ways of feeling bad, our prospects for feeling good and maintaining that feeling are slim.

Humanity’s discontents are hydra-headed: “Down, wantons down!” we shout at them, but we suffer incessantly as the bliss of satiety slips evermore away.

Then, as if the discontents of our animal appetites were not enough, add to those our intellectual longings after greater knowledge, power, and dominion, far beyond the capabilities of beings unendowed with frontal cortexes, languages and egoic aspirations.

Finally and ironically, add the hunger called “divine discontent,” a spiritual craving for the transcendental satisfaction of “salvation.” Our presumed Deity invests us with yearnings for the Ultimate.

Where then is bliss, enduring fulfillment, other than in death? Are we forever condemned to walk or crawl the Earth longing, striving and starving?

Or is there some magic well we might discover where we can draw up the elixir of delight, enlightenment and absolute content?

Such is the quest of the human spirit, and no surrogate anodyne can sate our spiritual cravings. Only the bliss of union with the divine spirit can quench this ultimate thirst.

If you would feel good, seek that.

So say the seers and sages of all eras.

*