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David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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We forget how to be happy, but children and animals remember

By David McElroy · April 26, 2019

I clearly remember the moment this picture was taken — and I remember why that day was so special to me.

I was visiting my sister and my nieces at their home in Nashville. It was an unhappy time for me — about 10 years ago — because I had gone through an emotionally difficult breakup. I was eating my way through depression and I’d gained a hundred pounds. (I’ve never managed to take all of it off.)

In the middle of that darkness, I lost the ability — at least temporarily — to experience joy or pleasure. The only exceptions to that were the joy and happiness I felt with my nieces and with my cats and dogs.

That’s Anna on the left and Katherine on the right. They were two radically different personalities, but I loved them both. They seemed to enjoy my visits, too. Maybe it was because I gave them interesting gifts. Maybe it was because we would go to Maggie Moo’s for ice cream. But I like to think they just loved me.

I was visiting that day because I had been so unhappy. Seeing them always made me feel loved and it always connected me with something which I find lacking in most of us who have grown old enough to forget.

Thursday evening, Lucy and I were in the car on a quick trip to an ATM. She was in the back seat, but she had her head near my right shoulder, as she tends to do in the car. She periodically rubs slightly against my face and I can almost hear her thoughts.

“I love you so much,” I imagine Lucy thinking. “I’m so happy to be with you every day. I can’t imagine being happier than this.”

It’s no surprise that I call her the World’s Happiest Dog®.

I know better than to think the thoughts in Lucy’s brain are really that complex or self-reflective. But something about her attitude makes me feel that this is how she instinctively feels about life.

It’s the same sort of attitude that I experience from children, for the most part. Even when things don’t go their way, they can quickly find another way to be happy.

And as I thought about this with Lucy, my mind went back to the time I’ve spent with 4-year-old Isabella this week. In her, I experience the same unbounded joy of living that I feel from Lucy. And it’s the same sort of joy that I felt back when I used to visit with Katherine and Anna when they were much younger.

I frequently say that I like children and animals better than most adults. It’s a joke, but there’s some truth in it, too.

Children and animals seem to live in the eternal “now.” They don’t seem to be held back by the past that they can’t change. They’re not crippled by a future they can’t control. They’re not worrying what other people think. They’re not crippled with self-doubt.

They seem to be happy to be alive and enjoying this world.

I know that adults can experience this, too. Every now and then, I’ve met some of them. My mother was one of them. She was very child-like in some ways, and I wonder sometimes if I shouldn’t be more in touch with that part of me which came from her instead of the critical part which I inherited from my father.

But most adults have forgotten how to experience happiness, much less joy.

Most adults are confused about what happiness is. To them, they’ve substituted an odd notion that being happy is about pleasure or “having fun,” which most often seems to involve getting drunk and doing things they wouldn’t do if they were sober.

There’s nothing wrong with having fun, although my idea of fun is very different from that of most people. There’s also nothing wrong with experiencing pleasure, although most people seem to be willing to degrade themselves or others in order to have momentary pleasure.

But fun and pleasure are fleeting. You experience them for a moment and they’re gone. They’re like candy or some form of empty junk food.

Joy is different.

Joy is transcendent. It touches something deeper in your soul. If you remember how to feel joy, it’s something which doesn’t ever fully leave you.

The more true joy you feel, the closer you feel to all of Nature. You start to realize that Creation is more than just a random collection of molecules that somehow magically came to life. You realize that there is meaning in life — not necessarily even in what we accomplish or what we show to other people.

There is meaning in life that comes from just experiencing the joy of being alive.

Children would rarely be able to articulate that. Animals would never be able to comprehend it, much less say it. But children and animals somehow understand that joy. As we become “responsible adults,” we seem to forget the joy. We seem to forget the meaning of life. We forget everything that seemed so obvious when the world was beautiful and innocent.

That’s why I enjoyed Katherine and Anna so much as children.

That’s why I’ve enjoyed spending time with Isabella this week.

That’s why I love Lucy and my cats so fiercely.

They all give me something — a window into something which I barely remember. I want to spend my life more deeply enmeshed in the joy and wonder and happiness which seem to come so easily to them.

As adults, we forget how to do that. A few of us remember — just enough to want it back — and I’m still trying to bring that joy and meaning back to my life full time.

Note: The last photo was from a visit to Nashville to see Katherine and Anna in about 2002. I can’t believe Anna was ever that tiny.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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