You tell me if this is a cult

My friend Sarah and I went to a free "career seminar" in downtown Chicago. We both signed up for it a few months ago, when we went to a networking event for job seekers. The weekend seminar featured two main speakers who were a husband and wife team--we'll call him "Adolph" and her "Imelda."

Sarah and I went to this career seminar hoping to get some interesting tips on networking, moving your job search forward, finding renewed purpose and direction in a career and ... stuff like that. We knew the weekend would be a hard sell. I figured it was the same as one of those free timeshare deals, where you are invited to enjoy a lovely weekend at a resort at no charge, if you are willing to endure the relentless selling and cajoling to buy into the timeshare. I was convinced I could say no to whatever they threw at me.

Well, I was right that it was a hard sell. But it wasn't a hard sell the way a timeshare is or a car dealership is. These people tried to sell us in the same way that the Koreans tried to sell the American prisoners of war or Jim Jones sold the people of Jonestown. I will also note that it didn't work on me or Sarah. But part of the reason it didn't work is because we left before they brought out their most "effective" techniques. I am not confident that had I endured what they threw at the group in the last few hours of the weekend that I would have been able to say no.

We arrived on a Friday night and we were greeted with bright, smiley, happy-to-see-ya faces at every door we walked through to get into the building and up the elevator to where the seminar was held. When we signed in and collected our badges, we were asked to choose a phrase from a list that was printed on some stickers and affix the sticker to our badge. I chose "I live my life with an open heart." Other phrases emphasized concepts such as adventure and spirituality.

Then we were shuttled into a room with three long rows of chairs and I didn't notice it at the time, but all the chairs were small, flimsy, and placed right next to each other. Once we got ourselves and our belongings in the chairs, we were smashed shoulder to shoulder, with hardly enough room to move without bumping the person next to us.

Before we sat down, Sarah and I were approached by a happy, confident, middle-aged, balding guy who shook our hands and immediately started gushing about the program. He said it was the best thing he had ever done. He said he had been a self-help seeker all his life and he had searched and searched for meaning. He tried all kinds of seminars and programs and nothing helped him fill the emptiness and void in his life, despite making more money than he knew what to do with. Then he found this program. This was the best program he had ever been in and he truly was a skeptic for a long time. He is no longer a skeptic. We said goodbye to Mr. Smiley, and I noticed as I shook his hand that his pupils were so large that his eyes were almost entirely black, with the smallest rim of blue iris around the outside.

We found some seats, which were filling up fast. Soon enough, the show started. The opening act was the marketing director, who welcomed us, got us up and dancing for awhile, then seated us back down slightly out of breath. She started by telling us her story. She had searched long, hard and fruitlessly for the meaning of life and found herself sad and depressed, despite making more money than she knew what to do with. Then she found Adolph and Imelda. These two perfect humans had shown her the path to true happiness, and it wasn't where she thought it would be. And now she has an amazing, meaningful job as the marketing director for the group and she's never been happier. She was so happy she was practically crying. Wow. Now that's happiness. I wanted to hear more.

The marketing director told us that before we got started, we would need to learn a few techniques in order to learn the new material better over the weekend. We would be getting up and dancing a lot. We would be doing a lot of exercises where we would turn to our neighbor and talk with them. When the leader wanted us to be quiet, he or she would raise a hand and we were to raise our own hand, turning our eyes to the leader and quieting down. Throughout the speeches, we would rev our senses up with a rousing chant, complete with hand claps on every number: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9--HUH! 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9--HUH! We practiced our chant. We did it five or six times in a row.

Then the marketing director introduced Adolph. Adolph bounded on the stage, seeming much younger and with more vitality than his years. He had gray hair, was trim and wore a nice suit. He had so much he wanted to teach us. So much information he wanted us to get. And it was not easy. This information was going to shock and amaze us, so we'd better be ready and open and engaged and awake.

Adolph went on and on for a long time, mainly teasing us by telling us that he was going to tell us something truly amazing but never actually telling us what it was. Then he introduced his incredible, inspiring, brilliant wife Imelda and she ran on stage in a bright fuschia skirt suit that hurt my eyes to look at. She hugged Adolph awkwardly and he left through a door on stage right.

Imelda seemed to have one job and that was to get us to raise our hands. She asked us a million questions. She raised her own hand high in the air and asked us to give her a show of hands, "How many people were told happiness is about having more money?" We raised our hands. "How many people were told happiness is about having the right partner?" We raised our hands. "How many people think having kids will make you happy?" More hands. "How many people think you will be happy if you have the right job?" More hands. Endless questions. If we got tired of raising our hands and skipped a question or two, Imelda admonished us. "Come on! I know more of you think happiness comes from your career! Raise your hands if your parents told you that, even if you don't believe it." She was desperate for us to raise our hands.

When she wasn't asking us to raise our hands, she was asking us to turn to the person next to us and repeat after her.

"I believe that happiness comes from money," she asked us to say. The first person was to repeat. "I believe that happiness comes from money." Then the second person repeated, "I believe that happiness comes from money." Most people thought that the exercise was pretty silly, but we did it anyway. Everyone did it anyway.

Soon enough, Imelda was done with her part and she triumphantly reintroduced her beloved husband Adolph back to the stage. But before then, we stood up and chanted together, "1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9--HUH!" five or six times. Maybe seven. By the end, I was feeling a little transfixed by the chant. I felt like I could continue to say it over and over and over if they wanted me to. I peeked behind me for the first time the entire evening and the room had been transformed. Instead of an empty space, rows of chairs had been added behind me and each chair was filled so that the entire room was now filled with people.

Adolph was back on the stage for another awkward hug. He was fired up. He was so fired up, he was almost angry. He told us that if we want to be happy, we have to unlearn what we've learned and relearn the true path to happiness. He really wanted us to know this stuff, but he knew we didn't get it. We had never gotten it.

And that was the main message: You want to be happy. You are not happy. You don't know how to be happy. Do you want to know how to be happy? You do, don't you? DON'T YOU?!

Oh, yes, we did. By the end of the evening, we desperately wanted to know how to be happy. We were utterly convinced that we weren't happy and we needed Adolph and Imelda to let us in on their secret.

So they left us with a hint of the secret: The key to happiness is to lead an engaged, awake, meaningful existence. But that's only the beginning. We couldn't know too much too soon or it would completely blow our minds and we'd end up exploding and pouring off our chairs and onto floor in a squirming pile of ectoplasm. We'd be taking baby steps this weekend.

We split up into groups. The marketing director popped back up onstage and divided us into 10 different groups with 10 or 11 people in each group. Team leaders stood along the outside of the audience and shouted a single word. One said "Passion." Another said, "Adventure." Another said, "Intention." Another said, "Caring." Another said "Inspiring." And on and on. We were supposed to go with the team leader whose word matched with the phrase we had chosen at the start of the night.

I chose the team leader who said "caring" because it seemed to go well with my phrase about the open heart. Soon enough, we had all chosen groups (the only stipulation was that you were not to be in the same group as someone you knew). Now that we were in groups, we were given an assignment. The assignment was to go out and have an adventure. It could be whatever you wanted it to be, as long as it was something that got you out of your comfort zone and that you could look back on as cool and exciting and adventurous. We had to bring proof that we did the adventure and the next day our teams would choose a winner. Each group winner would talk about their adventure and when a final winner was chosen from all of the groups, he or she would win a prize. It was all very complicated.

I'll write more about the adventures Sarah and I chose, but I will leave this post by mentioning that we got to the seminar on Friday at 7pm and we were released at 11pm with an assignment to have an adventure before we went to bed that night. We were told to be back by 8am the next morning. I guess it was up to us to figure out when we were going to sleep.