Happiness is a narrative dead end.

We learn this the first time we watch a movie couple head off into the sunset. When someone reads to us the words “…and they lived happily ever after,” intuitively we know it’s time to go to bed. Book’s closed, lights out.

As writers we get this. We may not end every tale on a happy note, but we know damn well enough not to let our characters get too comfy along the way. For all this awareness of fictional happiness, however, it remains difficult to grasp how these same dynamics resonate in our lives. Oh sure, on some level of our consciousness we’ve recognized it when played out. We all know someone—or perhaps are someone—who always seems to seek high drama in life. We describe these people as not happy unless there’s a conflict or a problem. But we know this isn’t happiness; it’s the delay thereof. And perhaps that postponement is the reason they do it, albeit subconsciously. In other words, it’s not that they don’t want to be happy. They just don’t want the story to be over. They’re not ready to go to bed.

I’m coming to the conclusion that the act of wanting—anything—sets our human nature into a state of disequilibrium. And we will do whatever we have to do to set ourselves right again, to become aligned again. So logic follows that complete and utter equilibrium means the end of desire.

But that’s sad. Isn’t it? I mean, we’re taught early that the end of desire equals not fulfillment but death. But perhaps there’s a route between the paradox of disequilibrium on the one hand and deathlike stasis on the other that doesn’t sound so bleak. Recently, Kirsten Rian wrote a beautiful blog about what happiness looks like. And I think I agree in great measure that the symptoms of happiness she painted toward the end of the blog go a long way to describe it. What strikes me so pointedly however is that, as the members of her class were telling the stories that added up to anything but happiness, they each were, if only for a moment, able to find peace.

What is peace but a state of equilibrium, all sides balanced? All sides accepting the other, no pushing and pulling, no jockeying for position, no lobbying. In Kirsten’s example, each person sitting in her class engaged in sharing and crying were able to glimpse exactly where they were and, if even for a second, accept it.

They call it non-attachment, and spiritual thinkers have been wearing themselves out trying to tell us about it for eons. To my way of thinking, life is endless paradox without the function of grace. And, if you dissect the paradoxical relationship between desire and happiness, the answer grace offers is non-attachment. So, it’s not that happiness has to be the end of wanting. But I think it does have to mean not being attached to a particular outcome. Finding peace regardless of the dish served—that’s happiness, isn’t it? Of course, it can be downright healthy to want a better helping. But avoiding disappointment if you don’t get it, that’s the trick. To be in a state of equilibrium regardless of circumstance—is that not peace? Is that not happiness? And though peace and happiness might not be the same thing, isn’t one without the other a brief visit?

Our default nature though is to invest way too much of ourselves in the desired outcome, or we make sure to avoid fallout from possible outcomes by clever means of distraction. Coming in all shapes and sizes, there are the mega-Hollywood CG distractions like war, self-destructive habits, and, well, Hollywood. But, if my logic is correct, then desire itself is a distraction. (How ‘bout that consumer economy, huh?) And in Kirsten’s blog, it’s very clear how “With a dream, the past is leave-able, forgettable. Without a dream, we are where we are.”

Said another way, not to be where we are is to be in a state likened to a dream. And yes, in that place the past is leave-able, but the cost is that the desired here and now is forced to reside in the future, always that one step ahead where happiness waves in retreat. And that’s a nightmare.