Pursuit of Happiness

Pursuit of Happiness

1/14/09

Wandering along the waterfront where the huge yachts are parked, I am drawn by the most powerful pull to worldliness to which I can be exposed. All around Ft Lauderdale there are boats/ships, canals, drawbridges, and hundreds of services for the yacht owner. All destinations in the world are open to the boat owner of a sea worthy vessel. The advertisements always show a smiling 30, 40, or 50 something (you can never really tell) couple leaning over the rail of their 100+ foot runabout with half consumed glasses of champagne with the sun setting over the sea. They are so happy to have the world as their foot stool, and you know if you only had a few million, you could be happy too.

Then I was walking along by the dock, lusting after these buxom beauties, when I spied one of the chaps washing the deck and polishing the chrome. He was obviously not the owner, but just being a part of one of these floating jewels should have happiness growing up from the decks into your legs and your whole body. I gave my usual southern “Howdy” and he didn’t even look up. He was down right impolite in his disregard. Then I saw the real owner. He was grayish, slim, obviously successful in the way that he walked. Dressed casually and in bare feet, he climbed the teak stairs to one of the 3 or 4 decks above the white and chrome hull of this magnificent craft. I hailed him, not in the Beccaesque “Ahoy matey,” but in a more genteel “Howdy.” Again, no response. He really didn’t look that happy, not like the ads showed that you must be if you plunked down the dough to experience such ecstasy. He even appeared to have a scowl, like, “How dare you address the great impresario of business and finance? Don’t you know that I scammed everyone of you stupid stock holders out of millions while I ran the company into the ground to buy this boat? Now love me because I have all of this great stuff.” It is funny that as you work towards having people love you because of your wealth or beauty that you actually alienate everyone around you.

When you drive around Ft Lauderdale, you obviously are bumping into these people who are the owners of these yachts. They certainly don’t look like the people in the ads. I guess they are so worried about making the payment on the loan they took out to have that piece of happiness, they don’t have time to be happy. The problem is that they can’t keep their disgruntlement to themselves but take it out on you by cutting in front of you in traffic and in line at Burger King and are generally pushy because they have to hurry up and work harder to make that money to pay for the boat. These are the people that make our economy hum with productivity by making stuff that we can buy and throw away into the landfill so those same people can lament the growth of the landfill and global warming while having a cocktail party on their green house gas emitting yacht paid for by the Chinese produced landfill material that they sold to us.

Life is generally interesting in that we all spend our time working to fend off starvation and accumulate something so that we can hang up the jock and retire. But that requires the same skill as judging the amount of meat and potatoes to dish up so they are finished simultaneously. You certainly don’t want to run out of money before you run out of life, and the reverse is almost as distasteful. If you quit too early to have some vim left to enjoy sitting around and fixing things around the house, you might need to go back to work later doing the only thing you will be able to physically do and that’s be a greeter at Wal-Mart. Or if you time it wrong you will have to depend on our government for social security benefits. What is amazing, after spending 40 years paying into a “trust” account, when you attempt to withdraw your money, they act like it is theirs. I suppose the reason that I worry about retirement funds is that I sure don’t want to have to ask the government scumbags like Ms. Odel at Health and Human Services (amazing that they name it exactly what it isn’t) for a cent. They dehumanize the very humans that go there for services.

I suppose that the United Order was an attempt at providing a system where a person wouldn’t have to worry about the future just plunk along in life and when you hit a rough spot the rest of society will pull you along. The problem is that everyone wants to be pulled along and then there are no pullers, even in the church. Only in the micro-society of families does that idea seem to work. Certainly that dynamic works for the feeling of love and nurturing that comes with parenthood. The pulling is then passed from the parents to the children who then have children, etc. Why is it that blood really is thicker than water, that family ties really do mean something to all people, even in la Costa Nostra? Interesting how the church turns people back to their families for support, including financial, when they have hard times. It is also interesting how the church is frequently the substitute for family when we live far apart, but even that is a poor substitute. It provides that emotional and physical support that would normally be provided by extended family if living within close proximity. Unfortunately, the nurturing has to be done by assignment. “Hi. I’m your home teacher. I love you. It is my calling to love you.” Did the first Christians feel so much like family that they could share all things without jealousy or fear of not getting their fair share? Will we ever get that way again? Does a parent ever feel that he/she is not getting their fair share? I am afraid that what we are seeing on some occasions is that unnatural response. That unnatural response is because we are getting fed a lie from the world media machine.

Considering the budgeting of life’s time and accumulated assets, what would it have been like to live 900 years? I go through life like a blue whale with my mouth wide open straining all the bits and pieces of life I can while I’ve got the chance. I run through life looking under every stone not wanting to miss anything, checking off the items on my huge bucket list. Like Mark and I go through a vacation, never wanting to waste a moment relaxing. There is just too much to experience and so little time. But what if you had 900 years? What if it was 900 years with a bunch of sheep and no internet and libraries and scuba diving? That is when you look up at the sky and make up images from the stars and stories from those images. What if you had 900 years to watch the good and the bad ebb and flow? We would have been able to experience the middle ages, renaissance, industrial revolution, and wars, plagues, and famines. It is interesting that the 9 Nephites desired to join Christ after the requisite 72 years whereas the other 3 wanted to stick around. They would not experience physical disease and pain only the pain cause by the wickedness of the world. To stand around and watch the world do stupid things for 2000 years would make me want to renegotiate my contract. But, on the other hand, with 900 years you have time to get it right. I think it is interesting that the flower child generation put all their money on a one shot bobtailed nag and they lost. With free love, drugs, and getting back to nature they ended up with HIV, a fried brain, and living in a cold, leaky, shack in the dark. Elder Bednar use to talk about how he was the 2,000 year old man. He figured that if he got 35 years of experience from each person he interviewed, he would have the equivalent experience of a 2000 year old man. That is certainly the necessity of the scriptures. They are thousands of years experience bound into a relatively small volume. But some of us cannot learn from listening, we must go and try out our own ideas, to kick against the pricks. Thank heavens for the atonement. That way we can get “do-overs.” But even those are relatively few in number until you run out of time.

So what is the point in all of this? Don’t waste your time on mirages in advertising. They promise companionship, love, and happiness and deliver, debt, solitude, and a pruny face from scowling. Social security comes from the original security of the family and the combined strength of the unit. Finances are important for independence from government intervention. Our family is yet small and relatively weak as a bulwark from a major impact from without the walls, but we are a growing small unit of Zion. Though we are apart, we are together. The gospel teaches all of the correct principles for happiness. I love you all.

Dad.