Quickie Nirvana

I love this article and find it uniquely concise in its description of the 60's generation and the miserable mess they have made of this once-great country. Read and enjoy......


Quickie Nirvana

There's no easy way to find happiness, there's no "quickie nirvana" in life. A lot of us formerly self-absorbed Baby Boomers are waking up to this fact as the economy tanks, 401Ks are dust in the wind, children can't identify the U.S. on a map, and the shadow of the next, big domestic terrorist hit is just behind the next skyscraper or under an airliner seat. It's a weird world we live in, a place where the town lines of Levitttown, Stepford, Woodstock, and Hooverville appear to be intersecting.

For Boomers who had put their hopes in material things, vapid lifestyles, or alternative reality world views, it's all in free fall now. And let's be honest — it has been in free fall since Sept. 11, 2001. It's very disconcerting, very scary. Perhaps the only good aspect of a self-absorbed generation falling back to earth is that when it reaches the ground there's no where else to go.

In uncertain times, many Boomers are finding escape in alcohol, drugs, even workaholism. But then when times were good, many of our generation resorted to the same stuff —alcohol, drugs, etc. So what were/are we escaping? Reality? The Man? The Establishment? Our parents? What? And just how bad is this place we're running from?

Late in life I've come to the realization that lasting inner happiness might be an elusive thing: Metaphysical fads, living-in-the-moment movements, politics, the latest cause, mud packs, body work, food rituals, even mile-long RVs aren't going to provide us with lasting happiness — they're a temporary Band-Aid® on a deep, existential wound. Some days we smile, some days we cry. Life can't always be happy.

Over the decades I've seen fellow Boomers, yes, even myself, run to the nearest "quickie nirvana" whenever the world wasn't something we didn't like or didn't want to stare in the face. How did a whole generation disconnect with the world as it really is — a sometimes good, sometimes evil place?

Television may be the last place to find insights into the Boomer mind, but there's a beautiful Emmy Award-winning T.V. episode, from the 1977-78 season of "The Rockford Files" comedy-drama series (the source from which the term "quickie nirvana" springs) that provided me with some ideas.

This little film, not surprisingly titled "Quickie Nirvana," exposed a tiny piece of a lost generation making its foolish dash to find happiness. This episode was written by screenwriter, producer, and director David Chase (of later "Sopranos" fame). The Emmy winning episode stars actor James Garner as happy-go-lucky private investigator Jim Rockford and actress Valerie Curtain plays a young, lost soul named Sky Aquarian; she flits from one "quickie nirvana" to another.

I won't spoil the plot of the episode (now available on DVD), but I will say that P.I. Rockford delivers a pretty blistering sermon at the show's end. He sums up the '60s generation self-centered pursuits that has gotten us into multi-trillion dollar deficits, lifestyles we can't afford anymore, multi-mortgaged houses full of stuff, Pollyannaish world views, and a creeping intolerance of people who either don't look like us, think like us, or vote like us.

In this episode, Rockford confronts Sky after an ordeal that involves the young woman slowly seeing the personal gurus she once trusted for what they are — good old human beings, mostly self-absorbed, greedy, and not caring a whit about her inner angst. Sky doesn't quite make the final leap she needs to find inner happiness ... but then you'll just have to view the episode for yourself to find out what happens.

"Your alternative lifestyle comes out of somebody else's pocket," Rockford says to Sky at show's end. "You mooch, you borrow, you hardly work. If anybody doesn't go along with it they're fascists, or unmellow, or too competitive... All that love and freedom? Just another way of saying 'me first'... What you're into is having somebody else do your thinking for you... They have all the answers. Don't you have any answers of your own? There's no easy answer. There's no quickie nirvana..."


L.V. - Lou Varrichio, Editor
March 31, 2009