My wife showed me a YouTube video of a baby sitting on an oversized couch. One of the pillows just above the baby’s head shifted with her motion and came tumbling down to bonk her on the noggin. The shock in her eyes and look on her face seemed to communicate genuine bewilderment: should I smile or cry? For a moment it looked as if tears were surely on the way, and then, a second later, she smiled, and burst into laughter with sweet cackling that was contagious.
Thomas Merton spoke of how joy and sorrow are often commingled at their deepest levels, and the choice between them, if there is one, not entirely clear, particularly when our sorrow is cavernous, and our joy more than mere pleasure, as after the loss of a loved one when we find ourselves smiling in remembrance of irreplaceable moments while nonetheless expressing our grief through a shower of tears. And herein lies the confusion and trouble with the common pursuit of happiness: we would avoid suffering, and maximize pleasure, when in reality the two are inseparable, one paving the way for the other or even coexistent in some of life’s surprising and most meaningful moments. The emotional complexity embedded in the human experience resists simplistic segregations in favor of rich and messy integrations that cold reason finds hard to reconcile but which the heart welcomes as native and real.
Faith implies uncertainty, and despair the possibility of hope, every action a reaction, death following life, and no less life from death, and so on and so forth for all things with a natural concomitance gracing the illusion of every apparent singularity: light casting shadows, darkness concealing what is known, the unknown inspiring fear, fear fostering confusion, confusion eventually exhausting, and exhaustion a prelude to rest and a reprieve. We are submerged in something tidal far beyond our reckoning, swelling and shrinking, emerging and receding, ebbing and flowing, without ever ceasing. Forces largely unseen and beyond our control seem to govern our destiny. History. Gravity. Space. Time. Causality. Being, too, for that matter, for we did not choose to be here, any of us, nor did we have any say in the proclivities, personality, or intelligence handed down to us through our genes. Though our attention is often held sway by the appearance of volition, how much of our lives can we really say is self-determined? Perhaps this realization is an occasion for tears. Although, a wild smile might do very well all the same.