Take it a day at a time

Not marble nor the gilded monuments

Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme,

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.

When wasteful war shall statues overturn,

And broils root out the work of masonry,

Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn

The living record of your memory.

’Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity

Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room

Even in the eyes of all posterity

That wear this world out to the ending doom.

    So, till the Judgement that yourself arise,

    You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.
Shakespeare, Sonnet 55

Shakespeare's profound words raise the most uncomfortable issue of all in human existence--that nothing lasts for ever, not even us. He seems optimistic, though, that memory will suffice in keeping one's existence alive. A recent article suggests that the cultural malaise that we seem to be in--of unhappiness, stems from our habitual overuse of electronics.  The cure--get out and do something. Talk to people. Go to church, read a book, take a walk, do something.  I believe this is true. Countless times I have seen couples eating out who are both scanning their phones, presumably on Facebook, looking for the perfect post--the one that will fulfill all desire, that will make them ultimately happy. The sad truth is that it will never come. Nothing available online will finally satisfy that eternal quest for ultimate meaning. Vaguebooking and coming up with nothing substantial only makes the user more unhappy because he or she never finds what they are looking for. It's the modern permutation of channel surfing.

Shakespeare wrote at the end of the Renaissance, when the English Renaissance was coming to a close and the even flashier Baroque era was ramping up. A preoccupation of the Renaissance was the realization of mortality. Shakespeare's poetry, whether in the sonnets or his plays, echos that preoccupation.

I believe the root of unhappiness in contemporary society lies in our refusal to acknowledge death as a part of life. We've made some progress in that regard. Hospice is now widespread, almost universal in the U.S., and helps the family and the patient both to ease into the next world. But we're still unhappy. Certainly the death of a young person (I'll let you decide what is "young") seems unjust, but we have come to see all of death as unfair and unjust, as though we somehow had a guarantee of everlasting life without pain.

It seems to me that some people go through life always hoping for something more. Perhaps all of us do that to one extent or another. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. "My soul shall not rest until it rests in you," Augustine wrote to God in his Confessions. By nature we are always looking ahead to what is better. Unfortunately that can easily translate into never being satisfied with anything in life. That's not a happy way to exist, yet many people do exactly that. Balance this with the sense of entitlement that life should be trouble-free and you have a recipe for unhappiness. Serious unhappiness. Take it a day at a time.