Last week on the Charlie Rose show, I saw an interview with Robert Redford. The principal subject was Redford’s new movie, All Is Lost (another survival drama). Toward the end of the interview, Rose asked about his interest in the problems afflicting people today. Redford abruptly turned solemn and, without preamble, offered this: “Life is essentially sad… it has great moments of happiness; it has great moments of joy… but sadness is like a current running through life.” I gaped at the TV. Life is essentially sad! That’s a taboo thought. No one is supposed to utter it, especially on American television. In this land of pursuing happiness, if you haven’t achieved it or given that appearance, you’re a loser. Moreover, this is a Christian nation, probably the most ardently Christian in the world. If the certainty of God’s love, redemption from sin, and everlasting life don’t put a smile on your face and a spring in your step, you’re the worst kind of ingrate.
Though I know nothing of Redford’s personal life, I’m prepared to guess that he’s not a Christian. No, a person who faces life’s sadness with such frankness would have to be a Jew, a Buddhist, or an atheist. Jews are theists—though I’ve heard some claim otherwise!—with a focus on the here and now much more than on the hereafter. In fact, Reform Jews reject the notion of an afterlife altogether. More to the point, the millennia of Jewish history are replete with periods of shunning, abuse, and violence. Sadness to them is a stalker. When he makes an appearance, a Jew can only say, “Ah, it’s you again.”
Buddhists believe that suffering is an integral part of existence. Life isn’t essentially sad; it’s pervasively sad. They don’t have a religion so much as a coping strategy, a behavioral prescription for dealing with suffering. I commend Buddhists for the discipline to look at life without flinching. They are almost clinical in their dedication to diagnosis and cure. That said, I find Buddhism inherently flawed. Striving so intently to put a lid on suffering must in itself cause suffering. Buddhists are, I believe, in a loop of self-repression. Worse yet, they imagine that they can exit the loop by practicing their discipline over innumerable lifetimes—a delusion. So they, like Christians, find their salvation in the unreal.
I most empathize with atheists (agnostics, too—they are simply atheists in hiding). They accept that there is no refuge from misery. That doesn’t mean they are indifferent to it—far from it. Misery can be mitigated. Barbarism can be thwarted, the impoverished can be fed and sheltered, diseases can be cured, broken lives can be mended, and social justice can take root where none exists. Atheism moves this agenda forward by insisting that human existence has no broader context than that existence itself. It isn’t part of a larger context; there is no divine plan. Existence is terribly fragile and ephemeral, and we are its only guardians.
Mitigation of life’s sadness is as close as we can come to victory in our struggle to be happy. The current of sadness cannot be altogether dammed: hearts will continue to be broken, egos will be crushed, dreams will be shattered, trust will be betrayed, youth will be lost, and despair will pay its visits. A different kind of living is impossible to imagine.
The Scratching Post 