What makes us feel happy or at least comfortable or semi-content about things? Apart from discovering satori or enlightenment, I mean. (I happened to find this realm at age 19 by way of LSD and the Bhagavad Gita, but most many people haven’t a clue about this.) So what makes us feel reasonably good and assured about things?
In five words, a belief in the future. And, if you want to add nine more, the likelihood of a fair amount of sunny days.
Not a belief that a safe and semi-bountiful tomorrow is guaranteed (for that is promised to no one) but knowledge that I’ll have a reasonably fair shot at making good and necessary things happen…an ability to feed the fire and keep the wheels turning and in so doing sample the modest comforts of life (Italian shoes, scrambled eggs and a buttered English muffin, Criterion Blurays, an occasional trip to Rome or Hanoi or Key West) being more or less within reach.
What is the antithesis of this feeling? Well, one way of defining that would be the way I feel now. I love the idea of a flashing present and a robust future, but I don’t believe in it. I believe in my ability to keep working no matter what, as I never get sick and have always felt like I’m 37 (even when I was 21). I trust in my good genes and my general resistance to the usual maladies, and I love my wife, my sons, our two cats, the rumblehog and the endless trove of cinematic delights contained in my 65″ Sony HDR, and of course I cherish my large community of friends and colleagues.
But almost everything that Hollywood Elsewhere depends upon seems to be resting on thin ice these days. I don’t want to sound overly dour, but it all seems to be about a month-to-month luck of the draw and the direction of the sea breezes, which can be moody and temperamental. Fate is so whimsical. Very little feels steady and solid.