A song came on in the radio today —Lean On Me— and I started feeling nostalgic, missing my old summer camp, where every year we ended the camp season singing that song around the campfire.  The irony of my missing camp is this: I went to the same summer camp for 8 years, for five of those eight years, I was miserable; I was so unpopular, the kids all made fun of me, I missed my folks, I hated a lot of the forced activities and the brutal summer heat.

When that song came on the radio my mind flashed to a particular memory, of  little Alana crying at the final camp bonfire of one of my first camp seasons, struggling to sob out the lyrics, “Lean on me, when your not strong,  I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on…” That was a particularly terrible year, the bullying was fierce, no one was a friend to me or wanted me to be a friend to them.  Still, I hear the song and I imagine, not what I actually experienced, but what I think  the camp ideal should be, what it looked like the popular kids had: A connection, a bond so strong that the friends made would always be there for you.

 The truth is, toward the end of my camp career, I managed to claw my way up to the top of the social ladder, I was a popular girl.  Even once I did have friends, the relationships faded within a few months of leaving camp, hardly the enduring bond I imagined. Still, as the radio plays, I feel nostalgia for mostly crappy days, and a few good ones, that left me with none of the meaningful relationships I crave.  So much of life is like this, I don’t miss or anticipate the actual thing, I miss or desire an imagined ideal. Which is all well and good — to crave idealized versions of stuff — except I keep on craving in the face of abundant, clear evidence that the ideal is total bull shit.

 Tomorrow, I have to head back to SF for work and the idea of  yet another, seemingly endless, plane ride is cringeworthy. In theory, I always wanted this kind of life: Flexible job, the chance to travel, the sexy-jet-set-bi-coastal-platinum-status bragging rights. But the reality is I am exhausted, I never feel settled, I miss Eric, I crave not-so-sexy routine, and I absolutely hate getting on planes. I got exactly what I wanted, but it isn’t quite as ideal as I had idealized. Still, I keep pushing, hoping that when this phase of life can be wound down, the next will be better. After all, maybe traveling all the time for work isn’t fun, but I am totally sure it will be when Eric and I get to backpack through our retirement…

If I really start taking tally, there are plenty of times –work, popularity at camp, my apartment in New York –where I got exactly what I wanted, and I was still unhappy. Dissatisfied. So, naturally, I tweak my expectations I either build a new imagined ideal, or I assume I had simply fallen short in my achievement of it, and keep trying. But here is the thing, even when I actually achieve my ideal and I find myself happy –when I became popular at camp, when I had a peak life in San Fran — it is only for a little while before I am unhappy again. There is no enduring satisfaction, in fact, I am starting to think the intersection between ideal and happy guarantees a bumpy road ahead.

There were a few years, in my 30s, when I was living in SF, that my life felt so on track. I felt like my dharma practice was cruising, like my body was fit and beautiful, like work was fulfilling, my relationship stable. I loved the road trips up the coast, my friends and the neighbors. I loved not just my life, but who I thought I was; mostly I was happy. But with a single move to NY all of that vanished like vapor, suddenly I was achingly depressed.

When I start flossing out what made me depressed, I see that my oh-so-happy-ideal-life in SF was at the center of my NY pain. I missed my old life. I missed my old stomping grounds, my old hood and old peeps. If I didn’t have such a deep sense of loss I know I wouldn’t have felt so depressed.  What is more is that all that old happiness made my my new life someplace different seem lackluster.  If I didn’t have SF standards I don’t think I would have hated NY quite so much. I achieved my city/life ideal and I was happy; losing it screwed me twice over. Or maybe it actually screwed me three times…

My imagined SF lured me back, I took a job across the country with nostalgia playing my heart strings. Now, commitments have been made, contracts signed, plane tickets reserved, and I have a six hour flight ahead to consider the perils of chasing the happiness dragon.