Resolution

Galaxyland was more than an amusement park and concert venue. Its creator, Luther Constantine, also wanted to inspire its patrons as well as entertain and thrill them. What he had in mind was a Chautauqua Institution for a new time and place. The concert venues held ongoing open-air symposia at various times throughout the year.

Among them was a lecture entitled “How to endure a meaningless life,” given by Guy Duchamp, who billed himself, not as a motivational speaker, but as a motivation destroyer.

“What gets you out of bed in the morning? This morning, I hope it was this lecture but what about all the other days? Did you brush your teeth? Did you shampoo your hair? You don’t have to. Did you get dressed? Again, you don’t have to, you can run around naked all day if you want. Most of all, what gets you from morning, through the day, to bedtime? How do you fill your meaningless lives?

“Junction provides all. There is no struggle, and there is certainly no honor in meaningless work. My point here is that there is nothing you have to do. You can be a couch potato for the rest of your life, if you want. But you know that would lead to terminal boredom which could lead to desperation which could lead to … . Well, I’ll leave that last part to your imagination. You’re all here, I hope, to find a way off that merry-go-round, to discover a new, better path, a life of self-fulfillment.

“Good for you. I’m just the guy to give it to you. And I mean give. There is no money here. There is no want. You don’t have a goddamned thing to offer me that I can’t get just by asking for it. Except for gratitude. If I can show just one of you how to find a way to live that makes you happy, then I have done my job. Of course, if it’s only one, I’m not doing it very well but sometimes false modesty sounds good.

“Yes, I know that there are many opportunities to do volunteer work. This poor, unfinished world will need constant management and maintenance for many generations to come. The Flora Reclamation and Land Animal Research Centers have just begun their tasks, but they can’t offer salvation for the entire colony. They can’t be the answer for everyone.

“I propose that the answer for many of you for much of the time is to embrace the null. Learn how to find peace in inactivity. Those who practice transcendental meditation say they can prove that it results in physical improvements to their bodies, lower blood pressure and lower levels of stress hormones for example, as well as a general feeling of wellbeing. That may be true but it all sounds like too much work to me. I don’t even want to know what someone else thinks my mantra ought to be.

“For me, and, hopefully, for you, I favor a sort of positive laziness. I live in my head for much of my day. Partly, that is because there is little that I have to do. All my needs are provided for by JAY and I have learned to be content with that. Additionally, though, I have taught myself to live virtually. I don’t mean through a computer, I mean through my mind. Do any of you remember James Thurber's short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty?" It was first published in “The New Yorker” Magazine in 1939. It was a pretty famous story. Hollywood made it into a movie a time or two as well.

“Anyway, the whole point of the story was that Wally led an ordinary, boring life. To compensate, he fantasized all the time. He wasn’t really riding the subway to work, he was racing past Indians who were trying to capture the train. That sort of stuff. He lived in his head. It caused him a lot of problems, funny problems, but that doesn’t have to happen to you.

“Sit on the beach and wonder what would happen if a sea monster started to attack bathers at the edge of the shore. Change the colors in your head. Make the beach purple and the water orange. Try different things. Imagine what it would be like to ravish that sexy young woman lying naked on the beach or that muscular young man who keeps jogging up and down the beach like a shop display. Let your imagination run wild.

“Don’t overdo it, though. Mitty got into trouble when he forgot it was all in his head. Don’t let that happen to you.

“That is only one suggestion. The point is that, while physical exercise is important, mental exercise is the true path to peace. You don’t have to run your ass off to avoid boredom. The best way to kill motivation is to create scenarios in your head.

“Another good way is to consider your life, past and future. Spend part of each day analyzing what just happened. Try to organize it into the good, the bad and the ugly. Decide what worked and what didn’t. More importantly, remember what made you happy and what didn’t. Then plan what comes next, that night or the next day, and try to optimize it so that there are more happy moments than unhappy ones. Try to minimize anticipation, though. There is no better way to become frustrated and antsy than to really look forward to something. Most things can never live up to our anticipation of them. Let things happen but try to frame them in a form that benefits you.

“Bottom line, you are responsible for your own wellbeing. Happiness, contentment and a feeling of self-worth all come from within. They cannot be bestowed, you have to achieve them yourself. The question is how. Over these next two days, I promise I will show you ways to achieve that, methods that have worked for millions of people for hundreds of years. It will take some effort on your part, it wouldn’t be worth anything if it didn’t, but at the end of this workshop, I promise you that you will have a roadmap that will at least start you on that journey. For now, all I ask for is faith. The proof will come.

“My assertion is that each of you is endowed with an innate sense of self-worth. You know you matter, you can feel it. Freud called this ego. I call it survival instinct. The question is how to channel that drive towards something that will make you happy. When you don’t have to do anything to literally survive, you have an entire universe of possibilities to pursue.

“I can’t tell you what your particular path should be but these and other techniques will help you find them for yourself.”