Leaks

When you’re in a boat and you spring a leak the water comes in.  With a leaky boat you need to abandon ship.  It’s know as getting swamped, or in the language of psychology: psychosis.

When your heating system springs a leak, the water escapes.  The leak empties the enclosed system and you’re left high and dry.  The despair of abandonment, meaninglessness: neurosis.

When you take all the chatter about better living, dieting, exercise, meditation, loving etc. and distill them down into their quintessence, I think you are left with the image of chasing the elusive reality of Quicksilver.  It’s like mercury after the old fashion thermometers would break, silver droplets dancing across the floor.  The genie escaped from the bottle.  The loss of soul.

What concerns me with the never ending list of new methods to achieve happiness is this: they merely put corks in all the holes.  Yet it’s a fallacy that we are working with a closed system. The collective connections that transcend the individual are more than a story.   Psyche can come and go as she pleases.  The goal is not to lock her up.  No, no, no.  The goal is that she will stay of her own accord.