How does one reconcile the spiritual world with the material world? And what’s someone supposed to do when they’ve spent the majority of their life as a proper material girl? I’ve struggled with this dilemma for far longer than it might seem, and though I’ve literally just framed it as such, it’s never been that much of a struggle. It gives me pause, and that’s always a good thing. Whatever it takes to check oneself.
While stuck at home, I signed up for a free online course that Yale University was kind enough to offer. ‘The Science of Well-Being‘ is reportedly the university’s most popular course, offering a supposed path to a greater happiness in one’s life. I’m on week two of the lessons, and they’re telling me that it’s wrong to place faith in material items bringing me happiness. Well, duh. I mean, on some fundamental level I think we all know that. It’s how most of us were raised ~ one of those trite truths that is ingrained in our heads like a nursery rhyme, something that we generally all think we know, but that course is teaching me that maybe I don’t know. Or rather that I do know, but it’s not enough to know. We can know facts to be facts, but that doesn’t mean the sensible action or reaction will result. The human mind is trickier than that. On week two, it was waking me up to the idea that we have certain expectations of what we think will make us happy, but the reality is that those items have been proven not to lead to any discernible increase in genuine happiness.
Just before the lesson wound up, I was making the argument in my head that, hey, maybe I’m one of those rare exceptions that can genuinely be made happy from a new Tom Ford Private Blend fragrance, when the professor listed that very notion on the Powerpoint and I was caught with my pants down.
Maybe there is more I can learn, and perhaps more importantly unlearn, from this course. There are a lot of lessons going on right now. And just in time.
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