The Winter Of Our Discontent

It’s 9:20 a.m., December 21, 2021. It’s the winter solstice. I will be glad to see the darkness recede and sunlight dilate and expand broadly on the summits of the Cascades. This winter has seemed unusually dark. I attribute this to increased levels of CO2 in the air and the thickening of clouds, the kind of clouds that bring rain bombs, lightning and power outages. The effects of abrupt climate change. But enough about that. I listened this morning to three English vicars talk about Christmas on BBC 4, followed by an engaging monograph on desire. It was mentioned, as it often is, that we rarely understand the full meaning of our desires, and that often, when we achieve our desires, we’re still not happy. This always confuses me because each and every time I’ve achieved the object of my desire I’ve been extremely satisfied and happy. I can’t remember a time in which I desired something – a new coat, a place to live full of quiet and privacy, a comfortable bed, good food, the opportunity to get high, a book or a CD – that I haven’t felt glad, extremely happy to be in possession of that thing. What confuses me the most is hearing from actors and rock stars who’ve achieved immense success that they found themselves disappointed and depressed. WTF??!! I have never understood this. If I get a book published and it actually gets reviewed – an almost unheard of event in today’s illiterate world – I’m both ecstatic, and grateful. I carry a deep sense of satisfaction with me for days while it gradually dissipates and leaves me, once again, on the bleak rocky shores of frustration. And if – unimaginably – unbelievably – a book sold enough copies to bring in a life-altering amount of money – an adequate amount of money to allow R and I to live in a larger domicile with more privacy and quiet than what we now have, and access to healthcare and food security and a community from which we have not yet been excluded because of our low financial status – I’d feel nothing less than a deep abiding sense of pleasure and satisfaction. Desire is the chief motivating engine of existence. It is the reason we say and do things we might otherwise not do and say. But when the things one desires remain out of touch or unobtainable, the result is a slushy, amorphous sense of despondency called anomie, a word coined by French sociologist Emile Durkheim in his study on suicide and for which the Merriam Webster dictionary provides two meanings: “social instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values” and “personal unrest, alienation, and uncertainty that comes from a lack of purpose or ideals.” I believe we have two pandemics going right now, Covid-19 and its many ongoing mutations, and anomie, the dazed, listless movements of a public negotiating streets of boarded up cafés and bars and retail stores. That cluster of tents we see every day behind the Gates Foundation. The homeless, as they are called. Exiles in their own country. Which has unraveled. Come undone.