The Tricky Part

The tricky part of most days is thinking. If I can just get through the day without stopping I'm usually all right. It's when things slow down, when I'm given enough time to look out the window at afternoon light and the bare limbs of trees that the trouble starts. This is not entirely true. I often find that truly resting, staring for twenty minutes at a body of water is, in fact, peaceful.

I suppose what I'm saying is that I'm not good alone. I blame evolution or creation. Either way, we're not meant to be alone. Or, at least, we have to teach ourselves how to do it well. It's a bit inauthentic, this being alone. Rather, what I mean, is being alone even when I'm not entirely alone, when I'm working, or in a room full of people who are talking about things that drift past me like clouds and the moon. It is generally after these times pass, when I'm alone, that I begin to think about things that causes me trouble. There it is again, that thinking. The unexamined life is perhaps worth living. Perhaps that's why I enjoy distraction so much, music, television, the Internet, various gateways to worlds that leave me untroubled. I hear the objection already, though unsatisfied. Let us not worry the question of happiness, it is too contingent, too vexed, too intertwined with the blood and muscle fibers and families and neurons that bind us into the meat puppets that we are.

I suppose what I'm getting at is the inherent bias of the person who sits around, drinking wine at 3 P.M. on a Friday, which is, they're taking the time to consider what makes them happy or sad, and therefore, as we've seen in literature piece after literature piece, they wonder whether the people who are speeding about on errands: getting haircuts, buying clothes, changing diapers, worrying about the next thing, are happy. The general conclusion is that our consumer culture or worried non-introspective lifestyles are, at root, unhappy. However, perhaps that's because those less introspective types don't find as much of an opportunity to scrawl it all down. Perhaps they are not given the opportunity to riff on the wonders of a perfect sweater. Or, when they are, they are scoffed at as being too shallow. Perhaps they are just happy, though I promised I'd leave that alone.