The End of Bliss: Working with the Transience of Your Experiences

Odesza came to Boulder last weekend for a show. Their audience filled a football stadium. 

For those out of the loop, Odesza is an EDM (electronic dance music) duo that has found a vast and devoted fan-base here in Colorado. 

To their credit, Odesza might be best described as the true EDM- nebulous and genre-defying music primarily created around electronic instrumentation. If that’s your appetite, Odesza serves up a tasty meal. 

I have never seen an Odesza show but I am sure I would enjoy them live. Their songs are great if you have the ear for it- a melodic, orchestral dreamscape sparkling with catchy vocals, euphoric synth waves, and heavy, cerebral beats. Their songs are generally bright and uplifting. Poignant at times. 

Their lives shows are straight-up legendary. 

Great music aside, the visuals are next-level. I saw a few snippets of their act here on Facebook and it looked positively biblical- shooting fire, lasers, impeccably choreographed lights, and several massive LED screens constantly aglow with eye-popping awesomeness. I later learned that copious boxes of fireworks were detonated. It was massive. I can only imagine being a witness in the crowd. It looked like ten thousand people standing at the gates of some glorious apocalyptic heaven- powerful, ecstatic, utterly compelling. It was certainly not boring.

Odesza’s talent and reputation has been all but cemented in the hearts of Coloradans at this point and they have been selling out multiple nights at Red Rocks Amphitheater for quite a few years now. It would only make sense that they were ready for a venue upgrade and CU Boulder’s Folsom Field certainly made a perfect location. 

So on a warm Saturday night at the end of June, the people came out for it, and after a brief rain delay, it totally went off. 

The magnitude of the production can scarcely be overstated.

I only saw video the next day. My wife and I were in bed by 9:00 pm. 

Dozens of my friends and acquaintances were in attendance. My co-workers were still buzzing about it on Monday morning when I went into the studio. Clearly a good time was had by all- except perhaps the many locals who had a hard time sleeping with the earth-rumbling bass pushing past midnight. But even my studio manager, who admitted that the music wasn’t really her style, expressed her delight at the spectacle. 

Now many readers might not give a dusty fig about Odesza, but when it comes to our music of choice  everyone has their thing. Taylor Swift tickets were catching five-figure resale prices this past year. Beyonce tickets disappeared in seconds after going on sale. I have friends who follow Phish with near religious devotion. On the tragic end of the spectrum, people literally died amidst a frenzied crowd squeezing into catch Travis Scott at the Astroworld festival a few years ago. Clearly we humans do our music with much passion. As the great Paul Simon once observed, “Every generation throws its heroes up the pop-charts.” This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. 

Our desire to witness our heroes up close, to see them perform in person- it calls to us. Whether we packed into ancient Greek amphitheaters to see a play, pushed into dusty circus tents to catch a high-wire act, or stormed the muddy fields of Woodstock to catch Jefferson Airplane, we humans have always loved a good show. Add the possibility to see a celebrity and we crowd in even more tightly. There is certainly an innocence on the surface of it. After all, what’s wrong with people having good, clean fun? 

Well, there may be something going on in our consumption of entertainment that isn’t entirely healthy. Like any drug that may produce pleasurable feelings for some period of time, there may be an unintended cost from our reliance on it. Might our constant hunt for positive emotional experiences actually be keeping us softly dissatisfied with our lives in ways that we fail to notice? Perhaps what seems like the very spice of life has turned too much into the meal itself- keeping us constantly hungry for something transient and short-lived. One might not recognize what lies below the passing excitement because as soon as the discontent creeps back in, there are likely a dozen or more amazing spectacles on the horizon ready to rescue us from facing how we really feel. We can always catch another riveting show. Money might never be a limiting factor for us- only time and maybe our need for sleep. The concert calendar never pauses and there is no shortage of opportunities to catch great live music. But there is an important question hovering in the background off all this thrill-hunting: when the music is over and the house lights go up, do we feel satisfied and complete with what we just took in, or are licking our chops for the next sensation. Are we really into the soul-expanding joy of great music or just functioning addicts still looking for the next stimulating hit to get us back to those dizzying heights of elation once more? 

In some regards, this piece of writing isn’t about Odesza at all. It’s not even about the lengths we go to witness events of such magnitude. The Odesza show that came and went is simply being presented as example of a fundamental and universal truth about all dazzling spectacles- the inevitability of their ending. You can substitute any concert, party, vacation destination, Broadway musical, or other momentous event for an Odesza show. Burning Man, Coachella, Disneyland- whatever your bucket list item is, the simple blunt reality of it remains true: it will end, and you will have to contend with your present moment being whatever it is. 

Personally, I myself have seen dozens of fantastic and memorable shows in my 50 years on planet earth- from the Beastie Boys to the Black Keys, from Parliament to Pink Floyd and Public Enemy to Pretty Lights. I do love the concert experience. It hits you right when you walk in- the energy of the fans, the sounds, the lights. It’s electric in a way I wish church would have been. I really have nothing against the live show other than the sacrifices I have to make to attend one these days. Even the shows I sometimes had to drag my unmotivated butt off the couch to get to have been well worth the effort. 

In fact, I can’t readily recall many bad shows. Mostly they rocked. Even the one when I was 17 and got thrown out by the bouncer for stage-diving off a speaker. It was fantastic up until that moment.

Me, at 16.

I’ve gone to hundreds of shows, raves, concerts, festivals, you name it. I’ve been to some straight-up bangers. I’ve had powerful, luminous moments where I felt something deeply and inexpressibly spiritual in the ocean of the crowd- my own raptured dissolving into the music and the people. Bliss on top of bliss. These experiences exist only as faded snapshots in my memories now. I do remember many them being out-of-this-world amazing but the intensity of these experiences has long since faded. Even the most highly-anticipated shows that kept me gassed-up for days afterwards are mostly gone from my attention now. I certainly can’t feel them like I did back then. Though I can recall so many great shows, the greatness of such experiences is now resolutely untouchable.Those good times inevitably faded back into the ordinary mechanics of everyday living for me. I have observed this with such perfect reliability that it sort of fascinates me now in my older years: the lengths people will go to to keep chasing the ephemeral joy of the next fleeting thrill, the lengths I even sometimes still go.

Whatever amazing experience one had at Odesza, or Taylor Swift, or the Super Bowl, I will simply state the obvious: it’s over now. If you want to experience something like that again, you will have to do all the requisite steps to get there, and guess what… that too will come to pass.

This point need not be be bolstered by the ancient wisdom of Buddha or some other spiritual authority although many have said it long before now. You can see this truth with your own eyes- nothing lasts. It doesn’t matter how impressive, amazing, or memorable some experience was at the time. Even if you can’t stop smiling on the ride home. Even if there is a lasting and potent residue of euphoria that sticks around for days. Even if your friends enthusiastically talk about the sheer magic of it for weeks or years afterwards, in all cases one will find that the electricity of its impact is eventually depleted and the unassailable truth of it confronts us: it’s not happening anymore. 

THE GRAVITY OF FOMO

FOMO is a term that has been in use since the late 90’s though the phenomena itself is likely as old as humans. The fear of missing out. It obviously conveys the anxiety that many of us feel around missing momentous events and the nagging pressure to be there. The idea of pleasure missed, pleasure not had- it compells us to act. Social media may certainly exacerbate the degree that one may be stricken by FOMO, but FOMO is not propagated by social media. If one looks closely at the mental process behind FOMO, one can surmise that it is born from a deeply rooted fixation on pleasure. It is perfectly natural to discover some source of pleasure and think, “I want more of that” or “I want more experiences like that.” This often arises in the actual moment of pleasure itself- a person snaps out of the selfless perception of joy and into the ego body that asks, “How can I make this better,” “How can I make this last,” or “How can I do this again?” 

FOMO is born out of the grasping in that moment. Instead of allowing the full flow of pleasurable experience, a mental lockdown occurs. This is often the immediate response to the perception of pleasure. We cease experiencing it and begin to analyze it. 

“Why do I like this?” “How do I get more?”

We conjure answers to explain our pleasure- to source our joy to some aspect of what is occurring. This helps us identify future sources of joy. 

We form from our own lived experience a very useful sense of how the world works for us- that pleasure/joy/love can be predictably experienced in certain kinds of situations with certain specific criteria. We naturally seek to position ourselves in those situations. Whatever it takes. If $800 is the cost for third row at Aerosmith…we can swing that. 

Maya Angelou is famously quoted that “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” It is an alluring sentiment indeed. We humans, westerners at least, are apt to carry the commanding sense that life should be packed with as many amazing, memorable experiences as possible. We transmit this in our stories to each other- that to live an ordinary life is to squander the very gift itself. Our own aphorisms propel us in this constant drive for epic experiences:

“Go big or go home!”

“Follow your dreams!” 

“Just do it.” 

Each of us living in our particular cultural space will have our own absorption rate to this message. Advertisers know that if we are to keep spending our money, we cannot simply remain peaceful and content in the banalities of our lives. Entire industries are built on the pull of our FOMO- sports, music, fashion, entertainment, travel. We will pay top dollar to do something decidedly not ordinary. We gravitate towards the spectacular like moths to a bulb. The brighter the light, the more compelled we are to get closer. We humans have demonstrated time and again that there are very few lines we aren’t willing to cross for what amounts a few hours of excitement and the meager bragging rights to say we did it. 

Neuroscience has covered and explained the chemical side of pleasure quite extensively. Endogenous opiates and dopamine are released during pleasurable events. Pleasure is quite literally the experience of your own self-generated drug cocktail. That’s why you identify pleasure as pleasure- it feels good. It’s not in your head. Your body knows it. Your body says, “Yes! This is awesome!”  Your brain jumps in and says, “Let’s have more,” and starts to scheme of ways to keep the party going. Small pleasures like ice cream and laughing at a joke become overshadowed by gigantic pleasures like taking molly and dancing for two hours to Bassnectar. In our minds, to miss those super-sized pleasures is to forgo the breathless moments we were told measure our lives. We can’t have that.

So we play the game. We follow our bands. We pay top-dollar to sit closer. We might even buy the over-priced t-shirt that proves we were there. We take copious photos for our Instagram feeds so there can be no doubt to our peers- we are truly living our best life! 

But are we really? 

Or are we simply chasing the proverbial carrot-on-a-stick- always trodding after some sense of life-fulfillment that only can be found in small, fleeting intervals.

If we were to take a step back from the urgency to get tickets to Hamilton or Harry Styles, it might be discovered that we are actually only making ourselves more discontent- that every thrill, every momentous occasion only makes us hungrier for something bigger. In the breathless pursuit of our dreams, we actually forget how to breathe in the beauty of the ordinary. In our thirst for excitement, we forget to drink in the quiet splendor of simply being here with ourselves as we are and the world as it is.

Penny For Your Thoughts

There was a line of commercials some years ago for Mastercard. The commercials had a consistent formula that went like this:

“Item one… x dollar amount.”

“Item two… another dollar amount.”

“Profound lifelong memory of doing that awesome thing…priceless.”

“There are some things money can’t buy, for everything else there is Mastercard.”

These commercial were unavoidable in the 90’s. The implied message was clear: “money comes and goes, but the memories have a value that far outlives the incurred cost. Now get out there and spend!”

These commercials may have faded into obscurity now, but the message is still very much alive. We march towards the next pleasure with the same fervor that propelled us to the previous ones. Even if the costs are so big we need to pay them off in installments, we are sure that the memories will carry us through the next few billing cycles. The memories, we tell ourselves, are priceless.

But do our memories really have value? 

It is important to at least admit that any memory will ultimately lack the potency of the direct experience. Our memories offer at best only a superficial rendition of things that have passed. As amazing as it was catching Justin Timberlake’s epic two-hour show at the Pepsi Center some years ago, it is not a resource I can draw on when I am having a challenging day. I cannot close my eyes and imagine the pageantry of that night in any meaningful or emotionally valuable way. I can scarcely even recall what songs he played and if you asked me what the finale was, I would would come up blank. I can resolutely say that it was one of the best shows I ever saw in my life but the power is all but gone now. It exists only as a vague memory of something special, and as such has only the value of any thought I might have- pretty much nothing. 

Sit with that for a moment. What benefits are there even your fondest memories? Would you feel empty or incomplete without them? Likely not. You would simply have some other fond memories holding the slots. Will you ever say, “I wish I had the memory of seeing so-and so when they were alive?” No, you wish you could see them now. The direct experience is what you crave- not the memory of it. 

Let’s imagine a fictitious scenario- that we have the revolutionary ability to plant fabricated memories in a human brain. These memories will, once implanted, be indistinguishable from real memories generated from experience. In short, you will utterly believe that it happened. Now, if I gave you a choice- you can have $500 or a vivid implanted memory of catching your favorite artist in the front row of a concert, I suspect most would take the money. You know what you could do with the money. The memory- not so much. We understand that thoughts are immensely less potent than tangible purchase power right now. And even when the money is eventually spent, we will likely not regret prioritizing it over something as thin and ghostly as a memory. 

But we keep playing out this pattern- chasing the next fleeting adventure, and the next one. Our time, money, and energy are constantly spent collecting experiences which inevitably calcify into mere concepts of experiences. Alas, the meager reward for our pursuit of the thrill is only a hazy stockpile of remembered past experiences that seem vaguely positive but disappointingly distant. This distance taunts us like an unresolvable itch that worsens the more we scratch it, making us only more restless to keep going, to keep chasing, reaching for something that only retreats the more we try to buy it. 

The Case for JOMO

Some have pushed a different perspective, an antidote if you will to FOMO. JOMO, as it has been dubbed is the joy of missing out. 

Many people recognize the unrealistic pressure to keep spending time and money on all the thrills that their friends seem to chase. They prioritize their own self-directed path of life fulfillment. Instead of depleting energy and resources in pursuit of pricey concerts, lavish parties, or high-profile vacations, they find satisfaction in not stressing about their bank accounts and getting a good night’s sleep. It is certainly a much more grounded and sustainable approach to life, but my only quibble with such a term is that JOMO-ers might still be hooked on the need for joy and it may be a bit disingenuous to say outright, “I’m glad I missed that concert.” It is likely that very few people in attendance at Odesza stood there the whole time thinking, “Well this sucks.” Even if the music isn’t your thing, the sheer spectacle of it all is enough to illuminate the eyes of even the staunchest EDM haters. One need not feign joy about missing out to find peace in the situation. 

And JOMO-ers might also simply be trading more accessible thrills for the exclusive ones they proudly proclaim to eschew. They may say “I don’t need to go to Coachella,” while hitting up twenty other small shows in their home city. They may decide that they don’t need a Carnival Cruise vacation, but still lay claim to the need for some other kind of noteworthy trip. They might not have truly cleansed their appetite of the need for memorable entertainment, only certain instances of such. 

Don’t consider yourself above this need simply because you don’t care about Odesza or some other specific thrill I've mentioned. The particulars of these compelling experiences are of no matter. It’s our relationship to them that warrants examination. How does it feel to have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that you would really like to experience pass you by? Are you okay with that? Here we can get some insight on what makes us tick and what may be in the way of our peace. Practicing JOMO is obviously a more authentic pursuit of satisfaction than simply chasing what everyone else seems to be, but it might still be saddled with the implied illusory perspective that satisfaction itself is something that can only be achieved or arrived at with effort. 

The Middle Path

Is there a place between the polarities of fear and joy for us where we can simply be cool with things passing? What might that look like?

IDGAFAMO- I don’t give a f*** about missing out, may not readily fit into our conversational vocabulary of acronyms, but it is a more sustainable approach that allows for the fleeting joys of experience without grasping at them. We need not esteem ourselves as being joyful that we missed the big event, only that we are unconcerned about it. Sure, if you want to put “having a good night sleep” and “no hangover the next day” in your evidentiary column that tells you you did the right thing in not going out clubbing with your friends, you can do that. Be careful putting a premium on joy though. Life cannot always happen on that end of the emotional spectrum. Sometimes life just is. Sometimes it outright sucks. 

True, lasting emotional freedom comes from breaking out of the binary dichotomy of joy and regret altogether. We need not evaluate our actions by the perceived levels of joy or regret they offer us retroactively, only in our ability to let them pass without coopting our attention span for too long. Enjoy the thrill of the spectacle when you are are in its presence, but do not get sucked into the misconception that your life lacks beauty, meaning, and value without it. 

    The trick is to expand your perceptual field to see the beauty right where you are- on your morning commute, snuggling your dog, going for an evening walk in your neighborhood, a good meal, time with friends, and simply waking up feeling grounded, energized, and creative. Instead of pushing ourselves to accumulate those breathless moments that we esteem to measure the value of our lives, we can simply expand our potential to notice and sincerely take in the subtle radiance of whatever is happening right now. The big moments that take our breath away are certainly welcomed, but the urgency to chase them fades. Each new day presents itself as something quietly magical. We are open to life in a way that welcomes its immense mystery without trying to manufacture it with constant entertainment. Cultivate the unshakeable sense that your cup is always full and you don’t have to wait in line to make it so. Recognize and embrace the fact that you will never really do it all anyway and all that anxiety to even try will eventually begin to evaporate. 

This may be a leap of faith for many. The other perspective may be deeply rooted in our psyches- that we have to live in constant pursuit of awe and bliss. Social media will bombard us with images that suggest life is best when it looks like a soft-drink commercial- fun, exciting, and dense with action. It’s easy to get pulled into FOMO’s gravitational field but this is where even the flimsiest mindfulness practice can begin to heal us.  When we observe the transient, passing nature of our experiences and the residue that accompanies them, we can recognize that our constant frenzy to bombard our senses with jaw-dropping sights and sounds is as futile as any Sisyphean enterprise. We are simply pushing the boulder of our emotions up the hill each day only to find them eventually rolling back down to where we started. 

Here’s a term you should know: the “hedonic treadmill.” This is the steady level of happiness we express beyond the highs and lows of peak experiences. It’s our baseline satisfaction with life independent of our circumstances. People who have picked apart the science of what makes us happy have observed that whether we experience something immensely good- like winning the lottery, or something horrendous- like our house burning down, we will eventually come back to about the same baseline emotional reality. Happy people who get their arm lopped off in a freak lawnmower accident will find happiness again. Miserable people who meet their dream partner and fall in love will find that misery creeping back in eventually. Whether you believe this or not does not matter- your wired psychology says it’s true. The pantheon of multi-million dollar lottery winners is full of people who could buy anything they ever wanted and eventually found themselves feeling empty and depressed. The big Odesza show happened, yes, and plenty of attendees will declare that they were genuinely moved by it. But it ended too, and as the rapturous multitude walked back to their cars, they were also slowly walking back to their baseline levels of happiness again. That’s how it goes. Pleasure wears off eventually. It happens to everyone. Even the most intense experiences of joy and bliss cannot remain forever. This is the transience of all our experiences. It is as reliable as the sunrise.

Though I am sure the dancing throngs at Folsom Field loved nearly every thunderous moment of that glorious night, I am also sure that Odesza did absolutely nothing to produce lasting happiness and life-fulfillment for anyone there. Happiness just doesn’t work that way. The temporary warm feeling elicited by pleasurable “things,” simply generates a deeper want of that temporary warm feeling. That Odesza produced this amazing event does not matter. The magnitude of one’s bliss does not solidify it into lasting existence. Bliss is simply a state and as such, is subject to the same laws of impermanence that apply to all states. This isn’t my sour grapes here. I’m sure I would have thoroughly loved that Odesza show myself. I know I would. But I also realize that its power would go the way of every other profoundly ecstatic event in my life- to its eventual conclusion. Nothing lasts. Even the most mind-blowing and euphoric experiences subside from their impact, and psychology has documented time and again that such experiences do very little to move the needle of our baseline sense of happiness. 

With the Odesza show in the rearview mirror now, it’s worth making this particular buzzkill of a point- that an event of such power and impact may have actually poisoned some a little bit. Instead of generating a lasting sense of peace and contentment, one's moment of awe and bliss may have rigidly colored their ideas about happiness to hold that there is no other way to live but in constant pursuit of more awe and bliss. In the enormity of the spectacle and the splendor of the lights and pyrotechnics, some may have slowly been hypnotizing themselves to think that happiness can only be found in replicating such thrills. So when the opportunity to do something big comes along again, they will respond without hesitation. They will open up their wallets enthusiastically and jump through any and all hoops to get there.

One might forgo sleep, work, time, money, or other necessities just to have a seat in the audience. In the grandeur and bliss of the moment, they might even say to themselves, “I’m so glad I did this,” and they may at that particular moment be absolutely truthful. The sentiment will fade though. Even if there are no significant costs to us, the glee of the moment eventually dissolves and we must contend with whatever is confronting us in the ordinary moment at hand. These ordinary moments, it should be also pointed out, will far outnumber the epic ones. You’ve got a lot of years left and you can’t just stay up partying in the club forever. Sooner or lighter they’ll have to mop the floors and you'll have to go back to work.

Are you really ok with that?

This is worth examining- your relationship to the transient pleasures as you discover them in those moments that Maya Angelou spoke of. Yes, it is good for us to experience wonder. There are psychological benefits that come from new experiences and moments of profound awe. Do not deny them to yourself. Watch for the hooks though. Watch for the disappointment that surfaces when it's all over. Check for the unintended discontent that bubbles up when some once-in-a-lifetime experience cannot be lived directly. Notice that edginess that perturbs you when you feel like you’re missing out. Sit with the feeling of it. Nothing wrong with treating yourself to a good show, but see if you can let the amazement pass without grasping. You may find that there really is nothing to be afraid of in pleasure denied. There are still ceaseless sources of joy and wonder to be found in the ordinary flow of your own simple existence. The beauty is everywhere- especially if you happen to live in a state as amazing as Colorado. Enjoy the show but give yourself time to let the excitement fade, to be with yourself when you're not being swept up in the spectacle. Open to the ordinary flow of things. Sit by the creek. Feel the grass under your feet. Take a walk in your neighborhood and check out the sunset. Let go of the need for the bells and whistles of the extraordinary and you might, if you listen closely, hear the gorgeous music of simply being alive.