In the movie, City Slickers, the hard-bitten cowboy-mystic, Curly (played by Jack Palance), gave an invaluable piece of trail wisdom to the main character, Mitch Robbins (played by Billy Crystal). For those who haven’t seen the 1990’s comedy, Mitch’s 39-year-old life had been heading sideways for quite a while, culminating in his wife’s request for a divorce. In an effort to clear his head, Mitch booked a working vacation on a bona-fide cattle ranch. It was Curly’s job to simultaneously drive a large herd to market, and make cowboys out of a group of, you guessed it, “City-slickers.” The following iconic scene took place on horseback. Picture a hand rolled cigarette dangling from Curly’s curled, leathery lips…the horses’ slow “clip-clop” beating out a rhythm underneath the dialogue.
Curly: “You city folk, you worry about a lot of shit don’t you?”
Mitch: “Shit?” My wife basically told me she doesn’t want me around.”
Curly: “How old are you? 38?”
Mitch: “39.”
Curly: “You all come up here at about the same age…same problems. You spend fifty weeks of the year getting knots in your rope and you think that coming up here for two weeks’ll untie ‘em for ya. It won’t.”
(Horses stop, the camera zooms in on Jack Palance’s tanned, creased face)
‘Curly: “You know what the secret of life is?”
(pause)
Mitch: “What?”
(Curly holds up his gloved index finger with the cloudless dessert sky as the backdrop)
Curly: “One thing, just one thing…You stick to that and everything else won’t mean shit!”
Mitch: That’s great, but what’s the one thing?
Curly: “That’s what you’ve got to figure out.”
I’m thinking about a counseling session where I got to be Curly for my client, David (not his real name). The day after our meeting, he and his wife would be boarding a flight to the West Coast for their daughter’s wedding. I posed to him the question I always ask brides, grooms, their moms or dads just before a wedding. Their long answers normally have to be whittled some until they fit the frame of a one to five syllable mantra that carries an emotional punch. I’ve found that, a form-fitted mantra has the power to set a course, and keep a client on course through a much anticipated, pressure-filled day that will present some measure of inevitable imperfections.
What was David’s answer? “I just really want to be joyful on that day!” His response alarmed me enough that I called an audible and allowed our appointment to spill over its allotted boundaries. I couldn’t allow him to leave for his daughter’s wedding set up for disappointment!
In his seminal work, Man’s Search for Meaning (1946) Viktor Frankl compared happiness or joy to a butterfly. “The more you to try to catch it, the more it flies away.” According to Frankl, one is better served by pursuing something that provides a sense of purpose or meaning. Such a focus will allow that elusive butterfly to catch you, rather than the other way around. By Frankl’s way of thinking, “[Joy] cannot be pursued; it must ensue.”
After some soul searching, David switched up his wedding intention: “To be fully present.” In our post-wedding counseling session I asked David how it all went. Sure enough, Frankl’s insight was once again tested, and proven valid. By being as present as he could to the people and events of those blessed days, David found that joy was able to catch up with him, and accompany him through that day and beyond.
Viewed through a spiritual lens, joy isn’t a human achievement, it’s a gift. Like other spiritual gifts, the trick is to provide a suitable container, such that, if the gift of joy is meant to be given, you’ll be available to receive it.
In a later book, “The Unconscious God,” (1948) Frankl returned to the theme of the most essential ingredient necessary in the formation of a container strong enough to hold so formidable a gift as Joy. In this second book, he asserted that a sense of meaning worthy of the immensity of a human soul is not a thing among other things that one can select as if from a catalogue, or a used car lot. Sounding more like a Rabbi than the typical psychologist of his day, he maintained that a sense of real purpose selects you, rather than the other way around. In the school of psychotherapy that he created, Logotherapy, everyone is seen to have a calling. To live a life of bone-deep joy, it is a prerequisite to humbly discern what Life, is calling me to…
…during this current season of life (because the calling develops and changes over time)
…during these circumstances (that I may wish were different)
…that I am sharing with these people (as opposed to the ones I wish were here)
…at this moment of history (that is uniquely asking for my response).
Questions for Conversation
When was the last time you consciously engaged a process of discernment?
What do you look for as confirming signs that you are on the right path?
Conversely, what are the signals that tell you that you are heading the wrong way?
What is your experience of Joy?
What do you think Life is calling you to these days?
If you weren’t afraid, what would you be doing right now?
Who could assist you in your journey of discernment?