I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable period in my life: according to my application of it, I trust that it will prove not merely an interesting record, but in a considerable degree useful and instructive. In that hope it is that I have drawn it up; and that must be my apology for breaking through that delicate and honourable reserve which, for the most part, restrains us from the public exposure of our own errors and infirmities. Nothing, indeed, is more revolting to English feelings than the spectacle of a human being obtruding on our notice his moral ulcers or scars, and tearing away that “decent drapery” which time or indulgence to human frailty may have drawn over them; accordingly, the greater part of our confessions (that is, spontaneous and extra-judicial confessions) proceed from demireps, adventurers, or swindlers: and for any such acts of gratuitous self-humiliation from those who can be supposed in sympathy with the decent and self-respecting part of society, we must look to French literature, or to that part of the German which is tainted with the spurious and defective sensibility of the French. All this I feel so forcibly, and so nervously am I alive to reproach of this tendency, that I have for many months hesitated about the propriety of allowing this or any part of my narrative to come before the public eye until after my death (when, for many reasons, the whole will be published); and it is not without an anxious review of the reasons for and against this step that I have at last concluded on taking it.

        Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, from public notice: they court privacy and solitude: and even in their choice of a grave will sometimes sequester themselves from the general population of the churchyard, as if declining to claim fellowship with the great family of man, and wishing (in the affecting language of Mr. Wordsworth)

Humbly to express

A penitential loneliness.

        It is well, upon the whole, and for the interest of us all, that it should be so: nor would I willingly in my own person manifest a disregard of such salutary feelings, nor in act or word do anything to weaken them; but, on the one hand, as my self-accusation does not amount to a confession of guilt, so, on the other, it is possible that, if it did, the benefit resulting to others from the record of an experience purchased at so heavy a price might compensate, by a vast overbalance, for any violence done to the feelings I have noticed, and justify a breach of the general rule. Infirmity and misery do not of necessity imply guilt. They approach or recede from shades of that dark alliance, in proportion to the probable motives and prospects of the offender, and the palliations, known or secret, of the offence; in proportion as the temptations to it were potent from the first, and the resistance to it, in act or in effort, was earnest to the last. For my own part, without breach of truth or modesty, I may affirm that my life has been, on the whole, the life of a philosopher: from my birth I was made an intellectual creature, and intellectual in the highest sense my pursuits and pleasures have been, even from my schoolboy days. If opium-eating be a sensual pleasure, and if I am bound to confess that I have indulged in it to an excess not yet recorded {1} of any other man, it is no less true that I have struggled against this fascinating enthralment with a religious zeal, and have at length accomplished what I never yet heard attributed to any other man—have untwisted, almost to its final links, the accursed chain which fettered me. Such a self-conquest may reasonably be set off in counterbalance to any kind or degree of self-indulgence. Not to insist that in my case the self-conquest was unquestionable, the self-indulgence open to doubts of casuistry, according as that name shall be extended to acts aiming at the bare relief of pain, or shall be restricted to such as aim at the excitement of positive pleasure.

        Guilt, therefore, I do not acknowledge; and if I did, it is possible that I might still resolve on the present act of confession in consideration of the service which I may thereby render to the whole class of opium-eaters. But who are they? Reader, I am sorry to say a very numerous class indeed. Of this I became convinced some years ago by computing at that time the number of those in one small class of English society (the class of men distinguished for talents, or of eminent station) who were known to me, directly or indirectly, as opium-eaters; such, for instance, as the eloquent and benevolent ---, the late Dean of ---, Lord ---, Mr. --- the philosopher, a late Under-Secretary of State (who described to me the sensation which first drove him to the use of opium in the very same words as the Dean of ---, viz., “that he felt as though rats were gnawing and abrading the coats of his stomach”), Mr. ---, and many others hardly less known, whom it would be tedious to mention. Now, if one class, comparatively so limited, could furnish so many scores of cases (and that within the knowledge of one single inquirer), it was a natural inference that the entire population of England would furnish a proportionable number. The soundness of this inference, however, I doubted, until some facts became known to me which satisfied me that it was not incorrect. I will mention two. (1) Three respectable London druggists, in widely remote quarters of London, from whom I happened lately to be purchasing small quantities of opium, assured me that the number of amateur opium-eaters (as I may term them) was at this time immense; and that the difficulty of distinguishing those persons to whom habit had rendered opium necessary from such as were purchasing it with a view to suicide, occasioned them daily trouble and disputes. This evidence respected London only. But (2)—which will possibly surprise the reader more—some years ago, on passing through Manchester, I was informed by several cotton manufacturers that their workpeople were rapidly getting into the practice of opium-eating; so much so, that on a Saturday afternoon the counters of the druggists were strewed with pills of one, two, or three grains, in preparation for the known demand of the evening. The immediate occasion of this practice was the lowness of wages, which at that time would not allow them to indulge in ale or spirits, and wages rising, it may be thought that this practice would cease; but as I do not readily believe that any man having once tasted the divine luxuries of opium will afterwards descend to the gross and mortal enjoyments of alcohol, I take it for granted

That those eat now who never ate before;

And those who always ate, now eat the more.

        Indeed, the fascinating powers of opium are admitted even by medical writers, who are its greatest enemies. Thus, for instance, Awsiter, apothecary to Greenwich Hospital, in his “Essay on the Effects of Opium” (published in the year 1763), when attempting to explain why Mead had not been sufficiently explicit on the properties, counteragents, &c., of this drug, expresses himself in the following mysterious terms (φωναντα συνετοισι): “Perhaps he thought the subject of too delicate a nature to be made common; and as many people might then indiscriminately use it, it would take from that necessary fear and caution which should prevent their experiencing the extensive power of this drug, for there are many properties in it, if universally known, that would habituate the use, and make it more in request with us than with Turks themselves; the result of which knowledge,” he adds, “must prove a general misfortune.” In the necessity of this conclusion I do not altogether concur; but upon that point I shall have occasion to speak at the close of my Confessions, where I shall present the reader with the moral of my narrative.

It took me years decide

What I wanted to be in life

But something I developed in an hour

Was more meaningful than all of that

Combined

See I never believed in truth

Because truth is just a word we use

When part of what we say might be right

But most of time it isn't

So I began to say to myself

That there is only one truth

And this truth is painful

For it's the ones closest to us

Who lie to us the most

But that isn't the truth you see

That's only because they talk to us the most

See the truth is

It doesn't matter what you say

The only truth in this world

Is that everything else is a lie.

"How can I be happy?" This question, while simple to ask, turns out to be perhaps the most important, difficult, and ancient of all unanswered questions. It's produced a myriad of answers over the years, ranging from the greedily obvious to the hopelessly abstract. It's a question that torments us, motivates our every ambition, a splinter deep beneath the existential skin. Despite the best efforts of philosophers, priests, and gurus, the answers we produce continue to diverge or are so abstract as to be impractical or irreconcilable.

Aristotle believed happiness was "the good life," a life of virtue characterized by moderation and the balance between extremes, "the Golden Mean." Epicurus believed happiness resides in tranquility. Christianity would have you believe that happiness comes in accepting Jesus Christ into your heart. Buddhism teaches that happiness comes with the elimination of dukkha, "suffering," or "mental dysfunction." Alongside these definitions are countless others, each supplying its own practice and map with the X in a different spot.

The funny thing is that we all know happiness intuitively. We don't need to dance around it with linguistic flourishes, we've all felt it first hand. For some, it's an ephemeral sensation of bliss, gone almost as soon as it appeared. For others perhaps, a more longevous state of being. If you, reader, aren't happy at this very instant, then surely you can remember a time at which you were. Thus we all know what happiness is. For the purpose of illustration, however, I will presume a few characteristics of happiness.

1. A distinct absence of desire or longing.

2. A firm grounding in the "here and now."

3. An silence of the "internal monologue." (What were you thinking about the last time you were truly happy? What did you say to yourself? Presumably nothing in that moment, the incessant rambling in your head was probably out for lunch.)

In physics, there exists the notion of a "ground state," also known as the "zero-point energy" state or in the case of quantum fields, the "vacuum state." These synonymous names refer to the state of a system at it's lowest point of energy, or its "resting state." Consider the system of a ball on a hill. If you place the ball on the slope of the hill, it will roll down. The ball atop the hill is an "excited state." Once the ball reaches the bottom of the hill however, it comes to a rest - it's reached its ground state. In other words, the ground state of a system is the most stable state, the state from which the system it not inclined to move, or "the state the system wants to be in."

I would like to propose that for all its elusiveness, happiness is simply the ground state of consciousness. It is the state which, once there, we've no desire to move away from. It is the state we want to be in.

But hold on a moment there, if happiness is our ground state, why do we suffer? What energy moves us out of this resting state? If we naturally descend into happiness, what force counteracts this natural descent? The answer: surviving the real world.

Should a person be born into their most imperturbable state of pure happiness, what motivation would there be to seek out food? To reproduce? To shelter oneself from the elements? A person in a state of pure bliss wants for nothing, desires nothing, has no use for thoughts or plans, and in the barbarous face of earthly reality, is quickly consumed by starvation, a storm, or a tiger. Almost ironically, our senses which bestow upon us the aptitude to survive, also bequeath us our suffering. The sense of pain, which assists us to avoid open flame. The sense of hunger, which reminds us to eat. The sense of pleasure, which informs our behavioral decision making.

And thus, armed with our senses and mental prowess, we humans find ourselves masters of survival, the whole wide world, in our hands. We command the lesser beasts, defeat the ravages of disease, and erect shelters from the storm. And yet still we suffer. For it is our very genius, our ability to gaze back into the past and scheme forward into the future, the integration of sensory information into cognition, our proprioception, nociception, and apperception that escort us "up the hill," away from the ground of happiness. But we long for lasting happiness, just as the ball atop the hill longs for the base. Only when the temporally bound perceptions, sensations, and cognitions that define our waking life dissolve, do we find ourselves firmly resting on the "ground."

"Hey, you promised sex. Where's the sex?!" I admit this has not been a particularly libidinous post. It was inspired largely by reflections on a post titled, "The Contrast," by MsHannahTweets (linked in the comments). In it, she writes, "having sex is something you do out of lust, or a feeling of obligation, or, honestly, sometimes pure boredom." She then recounts a memory of her roommate, distraught by her first encounter with coitus. But soon her tale takes an unexpected turn, as her grayscale portrait of sex matures into something far more profound and indeed, beautiful. It moves from being an act motivated by longing to an act characterized by love - no longer a vacuous attempt to temporarily abate this omnipresent sense of longing, but an act of affection enjoyed on a shared ground of happiness. Towards the end she writes, "people are right when they say you can’t be truly happy without being sad." This is true, in the same sense that the term "ground state" is meaningless in the absence of "energized states."

Hannah's story was telling to me, as it illustrated a story of self-discovery, one in which a profound distinction was made between "ecstasy" and "happiness." Ecstasy is bound in time, a peak doomed to normalize. Happiness on the other hand is itself the permanent normal. To return to our physics analogy, if happiness is the ground state, then ecstasy is a sort of "metastable" state. Imagine again the ball on the hill, but this time, rather than a smooth downward slope, imagine the hill is a tortuous continuum of peaks and valleys. Should the ball be rolled down this hill, it may find itself stuck in one of those valleys, comfortable for the time being, but not resting tranquilly at the base of the hill. Such is the common notion of happiness. Many of us, like, I think, Hannah, just need a ball named Jordon to come crashing into us, displacing us from our metastable roosts to send us plummeting together towards the welcoming ground.

And so here we find ourselves climbing the hill, shepherded by our ambitions, desires, and survival instincts, longing for the next metastable bastion of happiness in which we can rest our weary legs, tragically and comedically unaware that by simply letting go, rolling down the hill, we'd find ourselves grounded in the zero-point meadow of enduring happiness.

Our challenge then, as participants in modern civilization, is to learn how to live in the ground state whilst continuing to contribute to society in a meaningful way. Buddha would recommend the Eightfold Path. I leave the choice to you. 

The gates opened with a creak, allowing the small blonde reporter and her crew to enter into the Underworld's foyer. Inside, they were met with a pleasantly lit and comfortably air-conditioned lobby. At the front counter perched two female receptionists, both very professional in appearance, but neither particularly striking in any other way. One was a short, fairly round demoness and the other was taller and had a more athletic build.

 The reporter looked around in wonder and approached the counter with a puzzled look on her face.

"May I help you, miss?" The shorter demoness asked politely.

"Well, I'm just not sure I'm at the right place... Is this...?"

"Hell? Reception for visitors and guests. Is that what you were looking for?"

The reporter glanced back at her small team that consisted of a camera man and her young, very male assistant. They looked just as lost as she felt.

"Yes, I believe it is, I just... I just expected more..."

"Heat?" The demoness finished for her with an amused smile. "Fire? Smoke? Maybe some screaming?"

"Well, yes!" The reporter exclaimed. "This doesn't look or feel like Hell! It's more like the lobby of an old yet high dollar hotel!"

"That's because this is the visitor's entrance. Well, visitors and solicitors... A few guests."

The reporter shook her blonde hair out of her eyes and held her hand out.

"I'm sorry, I'm being impolite. My name is Zika Tiny. I'm a reporter with the Peanut Gallery, where our opinion means nothing to anyone and most of the news we deliver is gossip and hearsay. I'm here because my annoying voice finally got on your boss's last nerve and he gave me the go ahead to come on down and do a report."

"Is that so? Well you must be quite annoying indeed. He never allows reporters down here."

"You have no idea! Yeah, my boss wants me to find out how it is that this horrifying joint gets the award for best work ethics every year. It is run by the Prince of Darkness and the business is the torture of the damned, after all. Our organization is curious as to how there can be such high work ethics in such a place."

The taller demoness reached over and pressed a big, red and gold button. "The reporter is here. The one from the network you can't trust a word out of... ... Okay, I'll bring her up."

She hopped down from her perch on the tall stool and Miss Tiny noticed her quickly curl her tail up under her skirt.

"Follow me, Miss." 

Read part 2 posted directly after I post this one...

I’d had sugar only once, stolen, crude, buried back in the streets where I would meet a knife between my ribs if I so much as glanced the wrong way, a shallow wound if I were lucky enough. The dim lighting behind the small shop was barely enough to discern the large granules broken between my fingers as I let little slivers of the stuff slip onto my tongue, savoring the foreign taste. I didn’t know if it was the novelty or the adrenaline from the adolescent-led raid that had made it taste so damn good -- could be both, was probably both -- but something in my young mind had made me want to cry when the paper bag was empty. I’d licked off my fingers one by one, tilted my head back and tried to catch any remaining morsels, took a long, slow whiff of the sickly saccharine interior before me, unable to bear parting with it so easily, and gingerly folded up the small parcel before tucking it into one of the smaller folds of my worn sash. And I’d long forgotten the taste of it, but the simple memory of having had such a luxury was enough, sometimes, to make me forget about other things on my palate, about salt and ash and blood.

So I think I'm justified, then, when the taste of her lips is so overwhelmingly sweet that I find myself unable to react.

“-- and I’m sorry,” she murmurs, pulling away, and suddenly the dead end street is full and alive again, lights no longer construed in a strange, blurred haze, the bustle of the marketplace just barely avoiding an intimidatingly scarred, ever-scowling mercenary and her beautiful charge. The order is watching, I know -- with it, leagues and leagues of assassins, spies, unsavory informants -- and the order is ensuring that one of its best hired swords is not weak to something so affecting in the field as emotion, as fear, as a few seconds' worth of some impulsive, sheepish kiss from this too genuine, too stutter-prone, too sugared girl. The order knows how to cover all angles of possible betrayal from any and all pursuits, how to eliminate and manipulate its players into blank-eyed, whimpering submission, how to keep its employees meticulously obedient and dependent and perfectly, quietly, willingly in line. How to set snipers and executioners and murderers like wolves on a sap-soft, honey-sweet, dulcet girl like this. How to make examples of us if we would so choose the path of destruction they'd let us waltz upon. Or if I would choose, for once driven by the desire for human comfort instead of human blood, to taste and taste and taste that addicting sugar on her lips again and again until she sank breathless into my arms, laughing in that easy, singsong hum of a voice, teasing in my ear: What took you so long?

And I understand why sugar had been so addictive.

Here's what I, the humble fox have observed of the human condition:

Babies and children ARE the instruction books. They are so simple and funny and free!

But you grown up humans, all you ever want to do is put things in boxes, compartmentalize everyone and label everything to death!

You take great children with awesome spirits and you break them into a million splinters all because certain ones don't fit your perfect programme or your box or they don't look a certain way or slouch to much, or heaven forbid, they may be homeless children!!!!!

And grown up Christians are the worst at compassion! Aren't they supposed to be Christ like? Ha!

This humble Fox has witnessed some of the ugliest behavior by "Christians" yet they want to point fingers at others.

Children don't care bout color, religion, or race.

They don't care who's yo daddy, yo mamma or yo auntie. All they care bout is eating and playing and a safe warm bed.

There's your instruction book that's all you need to know.

Simple.

oh chantel !

angry with the cloud for roasting his fur,

watching the sea cheating when he takes and never gives.

understanding why the dove was never a king,

distilling himself to please the future.

Oh chantel !

scare of height, his bathing on the roof.

lusting for blood, he has been thirsty for days.

his worms lamenting, your starving for ages.

closing his eyes yet still lived for centuries.

chantel !

uphold your glory am here to save,

the wages of today flourishes in my palms.

I control the evidence of your past and present,

your future is blessed cause your past was cursed.

chantel !

your tears travelling between time makes me guilty,

the pains are bitter but the gifts are sweeter.

be happy for you labour prophecies your victory.

chantel till i die, i will never lie..

I asked him if he still loved her.

He said no.

(Did you remember that?)

A yearbook student, a staffer of mine, told me they

"looked to be too close"

And I laughed it off, shrugged, and ignored it

(The two of them are best friends

Two sides of the same coin

Probably siblings in a past life.)

You let go of me, of my hand,

walked away from me, 

to her. 

When she was clearly walking towards us, clearly coming to see us.

(You've never let go of her for me.)

I left, on a trip

You said you loved me

Before kissing her. 

(And no one but us knows you are a liar)

Within every discipline or profession exists its own code of ethics. Most of these disciplines require coursework designed to enlighten and edify as to the ethical specifics of said discipline and the consequences for the breach of such.

Within society, a very similar, yet perhaps broader code exists, that one could argue is the sum of all legalities instituted for the good of all; legal vs. illegal, right vs. wrong, good vs. bad. Several wise men have suggested that ethical considerations surrounding these dichotomies should focus on property, either real or personal, although universally accepted definitions of each have proven elusive.

Aditionally, a grey (#notmychristian) area exists, however, when a child is raised without the guidance of a functioning moral compass and a behavior or action has somehow slipped through a judicial loophole, making its ethical position a bit more nebulous. What then?

I submit that all people could be governed by one simple ethical expectation. I learned it as a boy and while many times chose to ignore its value, continue to extol its virtues. 

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  Matthew 7:12

Also known as The Golden Rule, the power and impact of this nugget is all too often overlooked, overshadowed, or ignored outright. I'll concede that I am rather simple and naïve, but will forever believe that this is all the ethics mankind should ever need.