Happiness Becomes You

Well, this is hardly what I imagined what my first blog in a long time would be about. But inspiration sometimes comes from the most unexpected of places.

I recently read a book by the incomparable Tina Turner entitled Happiness Becomes You. In it, she describes her own experiences with spirituality from growing up in Nutbush, Tennessee and through her final years at Switzerland’s Lake Zürich. I will be doing my best not to spoil too much from it as I believe it is well worth reading (I mean, c’mon it is spurring me to write after all!)

Reading it and seeing the benefit that things like meditation and chanting have had on her life, as well as my husband having already embraced Buddhism, have had me pondering something that teenage me would balk at.

Have I been neglecting spirituality to my own detriment?

Maybe I should back up a bit. See, growing up myself in Bellevue, Nebraska, I was not pressured into any form of religion in the slightest. My parents elected instead for us to make up our own minds. We only ever stepped into Houses of Worship for Boy Scout functions. My siblings pursued some forms of Christianity through the friends they knew. But for me my own exposure to religion was more of an example of what I didn’t want to become. In High School, I saw that religion was being used as a weapon against queer communities while science was showing me a learned perspective against their prejudices. Those prejudices reared their ugly heads in the news I was consuming after 9/11. I saw phrases and commandments like “Love thy neighbor” tossed aside while the label of “enemy” was applied broadly to the unhoused and humans from the Middle East.

I told myself that religion was unnecessary. My perception was that people used religion as a way to dictate their behavior instead of just being good people of their own accord. I still believe that to be true about SOME people… but now not all. I couldn’t see it then but I was just as guilty of prejudice against religion as I saw midwestern Christains being prejudiced against anything that was not just like them.

And this mentality stayed with me until I moved to Seattle. Seeing the hatred of some Christains kept me from exploring all of religion and spirituality. But then I moved here and had an experience with my husband where he hit rock bottom. He had lost his job and I was doing my best to keep us afloat. Anyone that lives in Seattle can tell you how hard it is to just make rent on a single income. At one point, a wonderful friend gave us a care package that included some psilocybin mushrooms, medicine that neither of us knew we needed at the time. But it helped my husband come back to life, and it gave me a much broader perspective. I started to feel more. To BE more. I joined him in his meditations.

I see my own journey to this embracing of Buddhist ideas as mirroring what Tina Turner experienced. Her rock bottom was the abuse she suffered during her first marriage to Ike Turner. I too had suffered abuse off and on. Sometimes from my father, and sometimes from the people I had dated. It’s interesting though, the abuses I once let define me now seem so far away. I haven’t forgotten that they happened, of course, but they no longer affect who I am. For Tina, her life started to change once she listened to the messages being sent her way and tried chanting a phrase: Nam-myoho-renege-kyo. That phrase has been used in Buddhist practice since the 13th century. While I have not decided if that is my path or not, reading her journey has enabled me to be more open about my own journey.

I feel like I have gone from a stout and firm denial of anything spiritual to an incorporation of universal love to improve my own life condition. I know there is a shift happening within, and it would be hubris to ignore it. To that end, I have started to take up meditation with a purpose. I have this feeling that it is just the beginning of a new journey for myself.

And to write this and share this with you, I feel like I am honoring the words Tina Turner writes in Happiness Becomes You. She hoped her story, experiences and knowledge would help readers improve themselves. In reflecting and writing this, I’d like to think I am honoring her wishes for the book.