There have been times where I have been traveling either abroad or within the country but to a small town located in the middle of what seems to me to be nowhere and I come across people who seem to me to be moving slower than myself. Seem simpler somehow. I completely recognize that this is an arrogant statement but still I think about it. I see them smile and laugh and move through their days like anyone else, I see their faces, their glasses, their beards and they seem to look just like anyone I would know from the city, except for the fact that they are moving at a snails pace, seem unaware of the bigger world.
I was in a small town in Ohio a while back and toured a manufacturing plant there. The manufacturing process was amazing. People actually making with their hands parts, and components needed to put together what it was that they were making. Some people would spend the entire day polishing buckets of bolts to a high shine, one after the other. Over and over. Others would push large pieces of metal through machines that would 'paint' them with a powder coating. The pieces would travel along a system of wires and pulleys hanging much like the meat did in the cooler of the first Rocky movie. They were endless, really endless. There was no end to the pieces. No way to say "I am done or close to done", ever! They just kept coming. Others would sharpen instruments with grinding wheels. On one side would be a box full of hundreds of dull instruments and on the other side a box with maybe five finished ones. One woman was bent over the grinding wheel working with two people on either side doing the same thing wearing a large plastic visor with a small desk lamp illuminating what it was she was doing. She could not talk to anyone because of the noise and the visors, she could not see anything other than the wheel, and she could not move out of her seat. How many had she done today, this week, or this month? My god, how many had she done in the last year, and worst of all how many will she do tomorrow? How does she get up in the morning? What makes her smile?
Later that afternoon I was privileged to be taken into town for dinner. It was Andy Griffith's Mayberry but in full color. Wow. I was just amazed with what I saw and how my head kept twisting from side to side as I saw things and peoples activities that kept surprising me. Not a thing wrong with anything I saw there at all. Good people who were living their lives, just living them differently. Just different enough to make me feel funny as I gawked. I realize now that I should be honest and need to take back the first statement about there being nothing wrong. There was something wrong, very wrong, but the scale of the problem was beyond anything I could imagine fixing so I left it alone tried to ignore it. It was the mullets. Guys and gals, kids and grannies, mullets of all shapes, sizes and colors were on display and most amazingly was that each of them seemed to have no problem getting laid. They were not out of style there yet.
As I sat in the lounge waiting with my colleagues for our table, I began looking more closely around me at the people. Outside the window were people walking around wearing sweat shirts with a high school mascot and name on them. Lots of them. I looked inside the restaurant and sure enough there was another. No where did I see an Ohio State sweatshirt or any of the nearby rivals, but rather high school sweatshirts only. If it weren't for me noticing this I would not have made sense of what the two men behind me were talking about. One of them was talking about the game on Saturday and who all was going. The other who was also about forty, was saying that he and his wife would be there early for this activity or for that one.
These were grown men and women who were going to see a high school football game on Saturday night and were excited about it, not for the fact that their kids necessarily were playing in it but rather because that is what they wanted to do that night. Apparently lots of people wanted to too.
Would it be possible for me to be dropped into this town and find happiness in it? Could I make peace with the fact that the highlight of my week would be the big game on Saturday night? That that would be the place I took my date, yikes, my first dates? Would I be able to slow down enough to find that peaceful and not hellishly slow? And most importantly how is it that they are perfectly at ease with it? Would I be happier living at that speed if I did not know any differently? Are they happier?
Most days, far and away most days, I am upbeat and happy to be simply doing what it is I am doing, whatever it might be. Might be just the routine of work, or picking up my kids. Might be my time at the gym or sitting down and writing to get a thought out of my head. A lot of my writings in fact come from simple thoughts that stick just like this one. Usually they are associated with some emotion that has me confused, at a loss for some reason. I might just have a feeling in my stomach that I can't figure out. Why am I feeling this way? What is it that has me bothered? When I feel unusually happy, again for no apparent reason I just go with it, feels good so don't mess with a good thing, after all life is pretty damn good if we are looking at the good parts. But when it is a bad feeling I try to get to the bottom of it before I go drink it away.
We all get down don't we? It happens to everyone, sometimes for a great reason that is obvious, sometimes for reasons like I am talking about now, kinda obscure ones. But we all try to put on a game face and go out and smile don't we? Go about and try look happy. Couples are the worst aren't they? The talk days after a break up is often about how no one can believe that they are breaking up, they looked so happy together. They seemed like such a great couple with everything going for them. This leads me to the question; are we all faking it? Are those in the small town faking it, or are the complexities of city life making it harder to be real, to be really happy?
There is an old expression that I think about often because I think it is so useful in so many situations and it simply goes like this. Fake it till' you make it. Yeah, that is my mantra for just about everything. Fake it till' you make it. If I am working on something new and maybe a bit out of my league I will act the part of someone who is good and confident at it until I get the hang of it. If I am depressed I will try to put on a happy face and more often than not by reaching out with a smile, someone else will actually bring me closer to happiness by returning it. Maybe starting up what might seem like a pointless conversation with someone I don't really want to talk with, but doing it with a smile actually tricks my body into thinking that I am feeling better. It's a tool that I pull out to try to improve what is otherwise a "blue day". Often it works, sometimes it doesn't but either way I am honing the tool and trying to improve it for next time when I need to pull it out. However a friend of mine who was feeling very depressed about things in general was surprised to learn that I ever felt down, and I was surprised that she was surprised. "Of course I get down, I am not happy with everything in my life" I said. And she was so sure I was wrong, maybe that I was lying that she challenged me on it and said "Name one thing". She was so sure that some people like me apparently were blessed with happy lives there must be others, like her I guess who were cursed with unhappy ones.
Gee, just one? I thought. Where do I start? There are so many things I am not happy about, so many things that keep me depressed if I dwell on them, from where I am at financially, to lost loves and singlehood, my skinny legs, to the spots on my bedroom carpet. In between each of those is a whole host of other things but I needed to focus now to make a point for her. So I started with simple things that I felt I needed to work on. The outside of my house is not nice. The inside however is very comfortable. The outside, I am sure makes most of my neighbors want to firebomb the place to get rid of it. All of their property values would instantly jump if my house was burned tomorrow even if they left the charred ruins in its place, and I sure that they all know it. I am embarrassed of the outside of my house. There, now it is out there.
Financially, well I am doing fine by just about all standards but I have done better, which means that I am living below where I used to. That kind of sucks. I have seen my business doing better and am now working very hard to get it back up there, but right now I am embarrassed by my business and the level of success I am having there. I don't like to talk about it because it makes me feel worse.
My dog is the culprit for several of the reoccurring spots, several I will take credit for too but the ones that keep coming back in different places are hers. I don't really get it why she does this but when she eats she grabs a mouthful of dry food and walks somewhere else in the house to eat it. Not always where I am at, sometimes just to the dark hallway. Other times late at night walking from the kitchen all the way down the hallway, to my bedroom where she drops a mouthful of now well moistened kernels of Science Diet onto the floor and eats them up a few at a time. There are always spots left after this and I am helpless to do anything about it. I still prefer this even with the leftover spots to the hallway, which I mentioned is often dark, because she at times misses a few of those kernels. There is nothing quite like running through the house to get the phone or the door and stepping on a "DAMMIT" late at night. I am guessing that visiting Tahiti and being forced to walk on hot coals would hurt less. As far as the spots that I am embarrassed about and what to do about them I am still at a loss. I am a man not a terrible housekeeper but not a great one either, so they stay there for quite a while. Its a constant source of annoyment and embarrassment. How do I get them out anyway without renting a cleaner? Bah.
Lastly I was single too I had to remind her. I was not blissly in a relationship cruising towards old age with my partner in life. I was coming home alone and going to sleep alone every night just like her. Single hood is not a unique adventure.
After I was done, she started picking each of my complaints apart as easy to fix even giving simple suggestions on how to do it. First she had my house fixed and taken care of by early summer, then the spots, then helped me put into perspective how I am doing and how things are growing for me. What I found interesting is that yes all of these things are on my mind along with of course normal life stresses, but that she, with how difficult it was for her to find happiness, could find answers to all of my issues so easily. Could so easily find happiness in my problems. She was making me feel better about myself, when she could not make herself feel better.
I think maybe I faked it too well in this case, or maybe we all need to fake it better. Maybe she needs to learn to fake it till you make it, or maybe we should all stop faking at all. True happiness is with all of us, some more than others it seems, so I am not talking about just being happy, but rather letting the down times show to others. Should we keep our heavy stones, our problems, to ourselves rather than giving them to others to carry with us? If I have complaints should I keep them quiet in my head or voice them to another which might bring them down?
Another friend has cancer right now as I write this. She has been dealing with it since about October of last year, has lost all of her hair, is tired all the time, has lost weight, and still goes to work everyday. What does she have to look forward to? Well she is in chemo right now and the next step is Radiation therapy. After that, hopefully a normal life, well I think better to say, hopefully life. Yet when I ask her how she is doing she says "Oh fine" with a tired smile. It's a knowing smile too. She knows that I know she is not fine, but what is the point, I guess she thinks, of voicing it. She is as fine as she could be, and does not want to share all of the details with me. I am thankful.
Life is about compromise, everywhere we go compromise. We cannot change others and they cannot change us, but together we might be able to move closer towards the middle to meet. I think emotions are like that too. If we are truly depressed for a good reason, maybe a death in the family, or a lost income, or any number of truly tough situations we can do nothing more than put on a happy face and move forward. That is the best I think we can do. Move towards the center emotionally by acting a bit happier than we really feel, and often this will bring out better emotions from those around us. That is faking it and some might say this is the problem with the West Coast. I have heard this from East Coasters, that we are not honest enough. That we are acting all the time, and saying we are great when we might not be. "How are you?" "Great, You?" The East Coast seems to have no problem being honest about how they feel if you ask them how they are doing but which is better? East Coast, West Coast or small town? Who is the happiest?
Are we built with a certain level of happiness in us, or are we able to manipulate it at will? Do geographic differences factor into our level of lifetime happiness? Can we transplant ourselves to gain the benefit if there were?
I don't know the answers to any of these things, maybe you do, if so say so. Tell me, tell the world. But I do believe that at whatever threshold we are individually as far as happiness goes, our emotions are like the tides. They will come and go. There would never be a high tide if there was not a low tide, so I guess that is just life.
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