Urination Detours at Night
Discovering the formula for happiness.
“The Happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts.” -Marcus Aurelius, Philosopher and Roman Emperor.
Do you have trouble sleeping? The solution may be found in this formula:
Thoughts (authenticity + understanding) = happiness.
I came across this quote from Marcus Aurelius one morning after a rough night of sleeping. I wondered how my thoughts were affecting my sleep. It seemed like this might be a point worth exploring. While I am a happy person, I am not that happy when I do not get a good night’s sleep. The quote had me thinking about what makes me happy and about people I know who are perpetually unhappy. How thoughts and choices affect our ability to be happy. When I was younger, I thought happiness was something that I was waiting for, something that might be delivered. Thankfully, I grew out of that phase. There clearly is a link between our thoughts and happiness.
If you are like me and sometimes you wake up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I hope you fall right back asleep. Most nights I have at least one such sleepy “field trip.” On the night in question, I woke up at around 4 a.m., did my business, and returned to bed. When I started having trouble falling back asleep, I tried my go to sleep strategy for such occasions. I have two options for such a moment depending on what is going on in my mind. If I am anxious, I talk to Eeyore, the name I have given the part of my mind that becomes worried and anxious. That usually does the trick. If I am not anxious, I focus on my happiness, my children, and the love of my family, I thank God for them. If that does not work or if I find that my ADHD mind has drifted and started tackling that “to do” list, I take it a step further. I start to thank God for every aspect of my life one at a time and that usually works. The morning after my terrible sleep, I spent time wondering why the usual strategies did not work.
The answer is more complicated than I had imagined as my poor husband discovered when I told him I had trouble sleeping and he asked what was on my mind… and I began a long rambling answer. I can ramble like a pro.
As I began my process of thanking god for my blessings, one specific blessing at a time, the process of repeating “thank you god for…” became onerous. I am in a spiritual desert and have been for a while. Thanking a god, you feel detached from or have questions about does not quiet the mind. It blasts open pandoras box. I feel like my spiritual foundation has been shaken in recent years, at first it was a tremor, but recently had become a Richter scale event. My last church experience only reminded me that some of the worst people I have ever known called themselves Christians. My interests in science, extraterrestrial intelligence, and my belief that we are not alone, all called into question my faith in God and my long-held idea that science and God were not mutually exclusive. Are all religions in fact human inventions designed to control people, devoid of ANY spiritual foundation? Additionally, my deep disappointment that humanity seems to keep sliding in the wrong direction did not help me when I was praying to a god who theoretically let all this happen. Or did they? I believe in free will. A pastor I enjoyed once said from the pulpit that she believed God is sometimes just as shocked as we are by what humanity can do. So, against that backdrop, on this sleepless night, I found myself disillusioned with God and Christ and praying to them felt inauthentic. I do not know what the good news of the lord is anymore. Because, if it is just that Christ was born, Christ has risen and Christ will come again, I must tell you, with everything going on, it is just not good enough. If one purpose of our lives is for our spirits to evolve, why does evolution seem to only relate to abject misery and the decline of western civilization?
And these were the thoughts swimming through my head that night at 4:00 a.m. after I returned from a normal urination detour in my night’s sleep. Leaning on God in these situations as I do, suddenly was not the place of safety, comfort, and care that it had come to be known in my life. And this was deeply unsettling.
For years I prided myself on reclaiming Jesus Christ for myself. I loved that I took back my faith from people who told me I was a sinner and would burn in hell for being gay. Realizing how what they said was the antithesis of Christ’s teachings took their power away and helped me find reconciliation. Even in recent years with the entirety of American Christianity compromised by a group of thugs who would reject Jesus himself should he return to earth. Even then I have been able to keep Christ close to my heart.
But something has changed, and I no longer have this certainty or clarity of thinking about my religious faith. And that is okay. It is another liminal space.
Aurelius says, “the happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts.” What is the quality of my thoughts? Are my feelings of spiritual desertion making me unhappy, uncertain, uncomfortable? Or is it something else entirely?
It occurs to me that discomfort is healthy in any relationship, even in one’s spiritual relationship. I feel as though I am entering a new phase of my life and what I am experiencing is a natural part of that process. When you let go of something, a belief system, a certainty about something you cannot be certain about, there is an impact that frees and frightens you.
I am letting go of rigid certainty that previously existed about religious practice. The ability to see and finally acknowledge the true nature of my experiences, in this case, trying to build and take part in community is both unsettling and invigorating. How I react to the experiences of my life has influenced the quality of my thoughts and as a result my happiness. My sleeplessness has nothing to do with the liminal space I find myself in spiritually, but rather, it has everything to do with the quality of my thoughts.
One of the bits of parenting wisdom I regularly give my children is this nugget, “you can choose how you respond” to the situations in life that you face. Something I learned early on from Viktor Frankl in his seminal book, “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
Marcus Aurelius has a point about how our thoughts affect our happiness, however the topic cannot be adequately explained in one short sentence. It is more complicated than that. Our ability to understand our thoughts, to live authentic lives, and our willingness to act when necessary are critical elements in the happiness formula.
When you approach your thoughts with authenticity and understanding you will find happiness follows. If it were a formula, it would be:
Thoughts (authenticity + understanding) = Happiness.
Nobody should feel trapped by life’s circumstances and for those who feel trapped, I recommend they look at their thoughts.