Episode 2: What the Carousel of Happiness Can Teach Us About Our Sadness

Welcome to the Carousel of Happiness Podcast. On today's episode we explore the relationship between dark and light. How do challenging moments in our lives become the catalyst for some of our most joyful contributions to this world?  What can we learn from the Carousel of Happiness that teaches us about our sadness?

The Carousel of Happiness is a nonprofit arts & culture organization dedicated to inspiring happiness, well-being, and service to others through stories and experiences.

If you enjoy the podcast, please consider visiting the Carousel of Happiness online (https://carouselofhappiness.org/), on social media (https://www.facebook.com/carouselofhappiness), or in real life; or consider donating (https://carouselofhappiness.app.neoncrm.com/forms/general-donation) to keep the carousel and its message alive and spinning 'round and 'round.

If you have a story to share, please reach out to Allie Wagner at outreach@carouselofhappiness.org

Special thanks to songwriter, performer, and friend of the carousel, Darryl Purpose (https://darrylpurpose.com/), for sharing his song, "Next Time Around," as our theme song.

Transcript

Welcome to the Carousel of Happiness podcast. I’m your host Allie Wagner.

On our first episode of the podcast, we began with the story of how carousel creator and carver, Scott Harrison, was first called to the idea of a carousel. Thousands of miles away from where the carousel stands right now, on a battlefield in Vietnam, Scott used a music box given to him by his sister in a care package to cope with the fighting around him. In between firefights, he’d press the music box mechanism up to his ear and listen. And there was something about the song it played that allowed him to zone out, as he likes to call it. And in these brief moments of pause, in between the fighting, he would listen, and see an image in his mind’s eye. Of a lush mountain meadow, Chock full of green grass, picnicking families, laughing children, and a carousel. Spinning round and round and round. 

And, as we discussed previously, that image of a carousel in a mountain meadow comforted him during an exceptionally challenging time in his life.

And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. How challenging moments in our lives can be the catalyst for some of our most joyful contributions to this world. What can we do at these pivot points, these dark nights of the soul, as it were, to move toward the light, rather than spiral down with the dark. What can we learn from Scott’s story that might inform our own?

Welcome, dear listener, to the Carousel of Happiness Podcast. Let us begin with today’s story.

GONG 

The training U.S. Marines receive is pretty comprehensive. It includes physical training, classroom instruction, and combat skills development. Marines are taught, among other things, the tactics of escape and evasion, known as E and E. 

Basically, if a Marine is separated from his unit or is conducting reconnaissance on his own, he learns to escape and evade the enemy by becoming invisible. Because, when a Marine is alone he is vulnerable and he does not want to be seen.

When Scott returned to the United States from Vietnam he had these skills; he knew how to escape and evade the North Vietnamese. You don’t survive in Vietnam without being able to do this. But, what Scott did not realize, was that he would have to use these skills when he returned home.

As soon as Scott’s plane landed in California, he learned that his fellow Americans, the people whose freedoms he allegedly fought for, would not look him in the eye. On the plane home to Dallas from LAX, he noticed that passengers would glance in his direction, recognize the Marine underneath his civilian clothes, and immediately look away. 

Between his haircut and his build, passengers on that plane knew Scott was a Marine, and because there was only one place Marines were being sent at that time, they knew where he had been. And the Vietnam War, at that time and probably for always, was highly contentious and politically charged. People had opinions about it. 

Which meant, just by looking at him, Scott’s fellow Americans had opinions about him. About who he was, and what he had done or, more accurately, who they thought he was and what they thought he had done. His presence made them feel feelings about the war.

At first, when Scott felt the eyes of someone on him he would turn to look. We’ve all done that, right? You can feel someone looking at you and you turn to make eye contact with them. Well, Scott found that any time he would try to meet someone’s gaze, they would immediately look away. Pretend to pick off a piece of lint from their sweater, pretend to read the in-flight magazine in the seatback pocket.

According to Scott, he felt more fear and hate from his fellow Americans sitting next to him on his flight from LAX to Dallas than he had from the North Vietnamese soldier who threw the grenade at him.

Sit with that for a minute. Scott Harrison felt more respect from the man who tried to kill him than the American sitting across the aisle in seat 14D. 

It became clear to Scott on that flight that he was alone. And while he was no longer a Marine, he knew what he needed to do. 

Escape and Evade.

Scott returned to school, doing his best to reintegrate into civilian life, but all the while he was doing a better job of becoming invisible. Of hiding. From those around him who could not see him for anyone other than “one of those guys fighting in that war.” While other students were partying and having fun, Scott was planning his exit. He knew he needed to escape.

Human beings are social creatures. Our evolution depends on our ability to relate with and support one another. And one of the ways we are able to do this is with these things called mirror neurons.

Mirror neurons are in our brains and they explain all sorts of previously unexplainable facets of the human mind. They help us understand empathy, imitation, synchrony, as well as the development of language. And, having been discovered only recently in 1994, they are still pretty new in the field of neuroscience.

You’ve seen mirror neurons at work when you go walking with a good friend and look down and notice your strides are in sync. That’s synchrony.  Mirror neurons are also the reason children can watch a parent tie their shoes and then be able to do it themselves. 

Mirror neurons help us understand what another person is doing, and also, perhaps more importantly, why they are doing it. They help us understand the motives of others so we can adapt and stay safe in groups that have different perceptions, expectations, or values than we’re used to. If you’re invited to a fancy black tie event, and you’ve never been to one before, chances are your mirror neurons are going to fire all night, as you watch and learn from the behavior of those around you. Anyone who’s traveled in a different country has likely had this experience.

One writer compared mirror neurons to “neural wiFi” - we pick up not only another person’s actions but her emotional state and intentions as well. You've also experienced this phenomenon when you walk into a room and the energy is really, really heavy for some reason. Perhaps someone has just had an argument and in here you come and all of a sudden you don’t feel so hot. We pick up on the emotions of our fellow human beings in this way.

And this ability to mirror others, and have ourselves mirrored by others is a human safety mechanism. We are not solitary reptiles. We are social creatures and our survival is dependent on our ability to connect with and relate to other human beings. 

But when we’ve experienced trauma this mirroring mechanism does not work the same. 

During a traumatic event, when we try to show our despair or our anguish, those around us seemingly take no notice. This happened to Scott when that first mortar came in. He was shell shocked. And when he showed that horror on his face, the other saltier grunts ignored, told him to suck it up. Either directly with their words, or indirectly through their actions.

It’s at this point that the human connection has broken down. In that moment, when the mortar came whizzing by, and Scott’s face twisted into anguish and terror and no one around him did anything, he felt alone. He felt unseen. And that, is unhuman.

But Scott didn’t know any of this at the time. He didn’t know anything about mirror neurons. All he knew was when people on that plane looked at him they felt fear. And he could feel that fear. And as his eyes scanned familiar places and faces for love and acceptance, he was met with mixed emotions, at best. Terror, at worst. 

And, eventually, this feeling of not being seen, this sensation of being feared and misunderstood, became so painful he built a sailboat and sailed away. Out into the Pacific Ocean. Never to be seen again.

Or, at least, that was the plan.

One day, about two weeks into his journey at sea, Scott discovered he was not, in fact, alone. A large whale, about the size of his sailboat, swam up next to him and watched him.

After the initial shock wore off of this massive animal being dangerously close to his boat, Scott laid down on the deck and looked back at the whale. 

And, finally, after 6 years of escaping and evading, 6 years of feeling invisible, this beautifully gentle living creature, also similarly wired for connection and community, looked back at him.

For the first time in years, Scott Harrison was seen.

According to Scott, when he held the whale’s gaze, he received a message from her. While no words were spoken, in Scott’s mind he heard this:

“Scott, what the heck are you doing? You don’t even know where you are going. Go back home and do something good for yourself and for others. The sea is my world, not yours. Stop being invisible. I can see you! Stop thinking you are insignificant. You are not and neither is anyone else.”

And then, about 20 mins later, just as quickly as she came, the whale dove back into the Pacific and swam away.

Scott, in turn, dropped the sails, turned around, and went home for good. His intent: to return and make himself useful. 

Scott’s story is unique in many ways, but not in the sense that most of us have experienced a similar “dark night of the soul.” Some call it “rock bottom” or a “crisis of faith.” What I’m talking about is a moment in this human experience where everything seems dark. Everything seems terrible. Nothing is working as it should. It feels like there is no hope.

And, this isn’t a new phenomenon. In fact, the phrase “dark night of the soul” has been used for a long, long time. The concept is thought to have originated from a poem by Catholic poet St. John of the Cross written sometime between 1577 and 1579. In this poem, the dark night of the soul is thought to be a phase of purification in the development of the one’s spirit. 

Joseph Campbell wrote, “​​The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation. When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed.”

The darkness that comes before the revelation. It would seem that darkness is required in order to experience the light.

What is happening in these moments of alchemy? How do we go from rock bottom to sweet revelation? 

It is my belief that the reason human beings feel negative emotion is because we are experiencing an internal conflict of some kind. Something in the world around us has drawn our attention to a belief we hold that is not in line with our highest and best self. And that internal discord is what makes us feel negative emotion. In that particular moment, we think or believe something that is quite simply untrue. And that hurts. 

Scientists would call this cognitive dissonance. Basically, cognitive dissonance is the psychological discomfort experienced when we hold two or more conflicting beliefs or attitudes simultaneously. Usually we experience cognitive dissonance when something in our external world conflicts or butts up against a long-held belief. 

Scott’s source of pain was his belief that he was alone. That those around him could not or would not understand what he had been through. That those around him, back at home, thought he was someone to be feared. And, here’s the thing– it doesn’t matter if he was “right;” it doesn’t matter if he was picking up those signals from others or if he himself was misreading those signals. What matters is that, for those many years, he believed he was alone and insignificant.

And that intense internal discomfort drove him out into the Pacific Ocean.

In my own experience of dark nights of the soul, I have found typically that the moment right before the release, right before the moment of revelation, is one of the most painful experiences. This is the point in which our old beliefs become too untenable, too uncomfortable, too unbearable. The pain of believing something that is not fundamentally true becomes so intolerable within us that we finally, typically out of exhaustion, we give up. We let go of the old belief; the burden has simply become too heavy. In Scott’s case, with that whale’s help, he let go of the belief he was invisible and unworthy, and with the whale’s help, understood he was not insignificant.  

We will talk in the next episode about what exactly transpired between Scott and the whale, and how animals can help human beings remember their humanity, but for right now, I want to focus on this inflection point. This point in which the tension of holding a false belief about ourselves or others becomes so great that we have a choice: succumb to the dark and continue to believe something that is untrue. Or, we can let go of the old belief causing so much pain.

I often wonder if we need the darkness to get to the light. Could we just go to the light and avoid all of the drama? And yes, of course, we could do that. But there’s something that feels inherently human about this transition from dark to light. St. John of the Cross wrote about it almost 450 years ago. There’s something that feels cathartic or transformational or necessary for our own evolution in these moments. It feels like something needs to be alchemized, something needs to be transmuted. They feel like necessary moments to have.

I think the trick is to notice when we are experiencing these moments. And identify them for what they are: an opportunity to shift and change something within. We all have the capacity to do this. It costs no money. You need no degree. 

Human beings are wired to feel cognitive dissonance, and use it to leverage something beautiful. It is how we evolve. 

And if we know these moments are part of being human, perhaps we won’t fight them so much; perhaps we won’t be down on ourselves or others for feeling this way. When we feel internal discomfort, we can know that it’s a neutral indicator something is off. Just like the gas gauge in our car notifies us when we need more gas. Our internal discomfort is an indicator that we are out of sync with our highest and best self in some way.

These moments of discomfort are a natural components of the human experience. And, as we’ve seen for the last 450 years at least, we can trust that the light is soon to follow. 

Whatever is going on for you right now, know you are not alone. Know you are not insignificant. And if it feels that way right now, just remember it is always darkest before the dawn.

Go to the light, dear listener. And if you’d like to share your experience, reach out. You can DM us on social media or send me an email directly at outreach@carouselofhappiness.org. Or maybe stop in and experience the carousel for yourself. Whatever you choose, I’d love to hear how you personally are interacting with the story of the Carousel of Happiness. What have you experienced? What have you noticed?

On our next episode, Scott carves his first carousel animal. I’ll tell you the story of “Rabbit the First” and we’ll explore how animals can support the healing of human beings.

In the meantime, take care. Be well. And, as we like to say at the Carousel of Happiness, “don’t delay joy.” And we’ll see you next time around.