As we grow older, it becomes apparent that losing one’s mind becomes both the greatest fear and the only goal worth pursuing. No associated numbers dwell in this no-man’s land of life’s journey: no specific age, degree of education, no amount of effort or time. The realization comes differently to all of us, and for some—I imagine—it comes not at all.
Consciousness, the human concept of the mind, of thinking in some fashion, metastasizes with life experience into a misshapen lump of contradiction. What we pursue does not bring happiness, and neither does what we accept, at least not on a conscious level. But what if happiness is merely the bait, the draw toward a manner of thinking that we are unable to comprehend intellectually, that rebels against the fiber of who and what our society has taught us to value?
The release of physiologic drugs, such as Dopamine—which is near and dear to my heart because of Parkinson’s—signal the positive reinforcement that keeps a desperate humanity looking in all the wrong places, or so it appears. But maybe the direction of the search is unimportant. There is no permanence in anything, especially in happiness. Might it be the process of challenge and reflection that yields reward, that eventually heralds in an elusive contentment, only discovered through an abrogation of a lifetime of facts and figures, of “losing one’s mind”?
Happiness encourages the weary explorer forward while being mistaken by the mind for the desired end state. Embrace your personal challenge. Hug it so tight as to make you brave enough to lose your mind in the process. Maybe all that is required of life is to continue on the journey.