My Only Job

I wrote yesterday about how we already have everything we want. However, as a friend pointed out to me, feeling good by itself, which is all I believe anyone really wants, won’t buy you groceries. This is quite true. And it is also true that it is hard to feel good when you’re starving, or living on the streets, or in the middle of a war. So maybe feeling good is actually what comes after we’ve secured groceries, and put a roof over our heads, and the cannons have ceased their thunder. Maybe feeling good is only the payoff once we have dealt with the necessary business, not of living, but simply surviving, of not-dying. Maybe. Except that while it is hard to feel good while starving, or living on the streets, or in the middle of the war, it is not impossible, and that makes all the difference. Somewhere someone has found peace in a warzone, has found safety while homeless, has found strength while starving, the same as somewhere someone can find their balance while standing on a tightrope strung between skyscrapers. Conditions cannot control how we feel, though they can challenge us. When we surrender what we feel to our conditions, when we make our wellbeing conditional rather than unconditional, we surrender the very life we are supposedly trying to maintain in our struggle for survival.

Which is why I love the arts. What if, I asked myself many years ago, I could feed myself and keep a roof over my head simply by doing what felt good? What if my job was to feel good? What if telling stories and inspiring writers and creative people would be all I needed to do to survive? What if this story – that feeling good is only what comes after the dirty business of survival has been dealt with – is a myth we’ve been feeding ourselves since the days in the caves?

I have to answer and answer and answer this question every moment of every day, the same as I must find my balance whenever I stand. Mostly, I live on level ground, but high ledges and balances beams and even tightropes present themselves from time to time. I’m going to fall; I have accepted this. No matter. My balance remains within me, there for me to find whatever the conditions.