Will I Find Happiness in a Shiny New Car?

Two weekends ago, I laid in bed feeling as though I were dying. The experience was similar to depression, but not quite the same. I was in a place of resignation—all hopes dashed. I managed to get out of bed to sip a cup of tea in the morning, and then tried to lose myself to sleep once more. I forced myself out of bed again at about 3 each day to take a shower so that at least I’d be clean as I died. And when the boredom got to be too much, I ventured out, mid-evening, to watch several back-to-back reruns of Sex and the City before trying once again to sleep through the night; only to wake up and live this dying routine another day.

My dying was triggered by a visit to the couple’s therapist—mine and my husband’s fifth or so visit with this particular guy. He suggested we meet with a second therapist who could then consult to us and to him, because he was “stuck.” Now, I understand that consultations can be quite helpful to long-term therapies and that this can work well in a variety of ways. However, in five weeks this guy hadn’t shown us that he knew how to be helpful at all, and he was suggesting that we pay to enlist help?! Why wouldn’t we just see this other guy, rather than pay him to help someone else help us? Why would we wish to continue trying when he joked that “maybe it’s my fantasy that someone else can help you?” Anyway, at the time I wasn’t angry. Just despondent.

This was my hope: I thought that if I fought, and that if we did the work, someone could give us hope. Hope that it would be better than it is now. Hope that I might discover the passion I’m looking for in the relationship I already have. Hope that I would discover the secret to living a life well-lived.

And this was my belief: If I fight hard enough I can have anything I want. If I were determined enough, passionate enough, and willing to work on myself honestly and psychologically, I would always find what I was looking for. If a person goes to years of therapy, works everyday to be self-aware, and does her best to be kind and real, then she will eventually create a good life.

The therapist told me that I was looking for a shiny new car and the only thing he could do was sell me an old one. In other words, I would have to settle for something other than what I really want; and because I was having a hard time dealing with this, he was stuck and couldn’t be helpful. There was no way to turn led to gold, to use a metaphor higher in resonance for me; even though I always believed I could do so. He was telling me that those hopes and beliefs mentioned above were false. Life is about settling.

This is when the hopeless and long days in bed with only a slight reprieve from Sex and the City—which, if you’ve seen episodes or the movie, you know just worked to reinforce my fantasy life rather than cure it with the dose of reality (or pessimism, depending upon how you look at it) my therapist was suggesting—began. I managed to pull myself out of it, with my fighting spirit I might add, and turn that despondency into anger. Anger is always helpful to me. Then I realized that the therapist was correct in some ways, even if not very skilled at delivering his observations. Fighting what is does not work. Accepting right where we are is always the first and necessary step to healing. I wish he could have stayed with us to create space to do this accepting, but then again maybe he helped me in a less costly way. His admitted stuckness brought me face to face with the tons of resistance I’ve been carrying around. He helped me to see this more clearly, and quickly. For that I am grateful.

I happen to be working with a Shaman who commented that this—meaning my life right now—is my dying. I am dying to the ego that wishes things to be a particular way and that is addicted to the fight that I believe will achieve such things. Dying in this way is difficult. Mostly, I feel disappointed… Disappointed that what I thought life could be is not. Disappointed as I look around and realize that this really is all there is. Some— my Shaman included—hold out the hope through their own experiences that although this is all there is, when we really accept that—fully surrender to it—we find a beauty in it that is better than anything we could have imagined. Full surrender can bring contentment. Contentment sounds a lot less appealing that the passionate life I was hoping for, but this feeling actually helps me because it allows me to move further into the surrender—which is always the opposite direction from the kind of hope I’ve described.