New England Transcendentalism and Ecstasy

Something we were withholding made us weak

Until we found out that it was ourselves

We were withholding from our land of living,

And forthwith found salvation in surrender.

--Robert Frost, "The Gift Outright"

Yesterday was so exquisite on the New Hampshire seacoast it brought to mind a conversation I had with a patient recently about the nature of joy and the joy of nature, and all that is part of nature, like neurotransmitters. 

This is a very wealthy man, and by all measures, a man who should feel he has everything life has to offer, and yet he sought more.

He had hyperthyroidism, which made him feel caffeinated, electric, unable to calm down.  "Sort of a milder version of Ecstasy," he noted, and it took me a moment to realize he was talking about the drug, not the mental state. He liked and used that drug a lot.

"You've got a lovely wife, three kids, more money than you know what to do with, a great life," I said. "Why do you need Ecstasy?"
"You're right," he said. "I've got it all, but at age 57,  that doesn't mean I should just ride along in life on cruise control."

That, for some reason, flashed me back to a moment age 17, at a wrestling match.  I was sitting on a folding chair at the edge of a wrestling mat with Billy Fricks. We had both just won our individual matches, each in a dramatic and, in my case, somewhat improbable way and were panting, trying to recover, as we watched the next match. We had no business winning these matches against county champions and the gym was going wild, a throbbing animal's heart, loud and pulsating and Billy, grinning, drenched, leaned over and shouted in my ear, "If we live to be 100, neither of us will ever have a better time than right now."  
I stared at him. 
His grin crinkled into a sly smile, "Well, except for what I'm going to have tonight with B.B. (his girlfriend)."
"Oh, so now if it's between this and her, it's her."
"It's not a choice of one of the other," Billy said. "They're both part of the same thing."
I looked across the mat, to the bleachers, where B.B. was staring, with smoldering eyes, at Billy. She was clearly going to get Billy a little higher yet, later on. 
"You may be the wisest man I know," I told Billy.

The New England transcendentalists, Emerson, Thoreau, that crowd, claimed that what we are taught about happiness and godliness and goodness by organized religion was all blather. Every person has an "intuition," an essential understanding of right and wrong and it is only when we allow society or a church authority influence us that we get corrupted, that we get it wrong. 

(Of course, they also thought materialism and technology were bad things. At the turn of the 19th century, they were already warning that technology would be running us and not the other way around.)

My patient lived in this tradition--he would not be shamed or talked into a more conventional pursuit of happiness.  Like Billy, who was having premarital sex at a time when that was scandalous, he wrote his own rules and was happy with the results. 

I'm not sure I'd still call either Billy or this patient the wisest men I know, but yesterday, when the glory of nature ignited such joy among the serotonin, dopamine and other neurotransmitter receptors in my brain, I could sort of understand the body electric thing.