Live Your Life

My daughter was complaining about all the ads on the Tivo screen so I took a quick look. One of them said, "The dishes can wait. Life can't." It's a car ad of some sort, for something called a Sequoia, which must be a big kind of car because sequoia is a big kind of tree.

This is a small example of the perniciousness of advertising and the way it creates the wants, needs and dissatisfactions that make you want to go out and buy something. In six words this ad communicates that the humdrum stuff isn't what life is about, that the important thing is to drive around in a large car and "live." The clear implication is that washing the dishes is not "living." Well, I've got news for you folks, washing the dishes is a lot closer to "living" than happily driving around in large motor vehicle. The suggestion that you should be feeling less than alive if you're washing dishes and that you should be yearning for the freedom a Sequoia supposedly brings you is not a positive message. If people are waiting for the moment when they can feel completely free and unfettered in order to be happy, well, that's a sure-fire ticket to unhappiness.

Life is not merely the sum of its parts, or at least to me it isn't. It's a continuum and it's comprised of all the moments, humdrum or not, and to suggest otherwise is simply deceptive. Maybe washing the dishes isn't the most thrilling part of your day, but that's okay, every day needs a least exciting part. How else would you recognize the exciting parts? The key to happiness, as I see it, is to get the maximum happiness from everything. Clearly there are things that are richer in happiness (or satisfaction or whatever you want to call it) than others, but if you can get some sort of pleasure out of washing the dishes, or walking the dog, or even getting in your new Sequoia and driving your kid in rush hour traffic to visit her friend in Upper Gwynned, then you've got a chance to enjoy living.