There's a joke a friend told me about a year ago that was new to me but could be 50 years old: three guys are sitting on a park bench, each with a big smile. One is young, another middle aged and the other, old. Says the second to the young man, "what you smiling about his morning?" "Me? I met this beautiful woman last night. We went back to her place and had the most incredible sex of my life! How about you?" The middle-aged man regains his smile as his eyes roll back in memory: "I made the best deal of my life this morning - a 2 million $ contract that will boost my stock in the company to the roof! Oh, and what about you?" he says to the old man. "Me?" says the geezer wistfully. "I just had the most incredible bowel movement..."
And so it seems that at different stages of life, we are imprinted with those memories that we consider most eventful and exciting. It seems true, but recently I have found that this is not the case. I doubt I am alone in this.
I was not sitting on a bench, but laying back in a recliner after a too-large lunch of black beans, rice and carne mechada, a great and cheap combo that I first came to know in Venezuela. At one point, I drifted into that half-sleep state that brings dreams almost to consciousness, where one would think I would be occupied with memories of our last trip to Costa Rica - or, at the very least, some darker anxiety dream about work. But instead, in it I was reliving a memory that I had not known that I had even retained. I was in 6th grade and was visiting a new friend at his home for the first time, a place a few miles from my own. Who it was didn't matter, because it was not about him or anything to do with him. Rather, it was about the scenery. It was a moderately cold day, slightly above freezing, so that the light snow cover had become a little melty. The sky was gray and the trees still and leafless, as one would expect in late winter. The weather, in fact, was about what we are having now in Wisconsin, and I would not say it is anything to write home about, but here...the memory was so exquisite in feeling that I could barely stand it. It's sweetness, simply the being there, provoked such deep nostalgia that I had to wake up and shake it off before I became too lost in the loss of it, in its being gone forever. But why, why such longing for a nothing day so long ago?
My beaver-like waking mind, ever trying to figure things out, then decided to hold a little experiment. I let myself drift into other memories, with the intent that they be the ones that bring the greatest pleasure. Without fail, they were all similar to the first - memories of small things, of a pleasant day on the beach, or outside in a sunny field, or in a canoe at night looking at the stars. No great sex, great deals, or great dumps came to mind, although they surely would have immediately after. But these were not the ones that stuck. Rather, always, it was the quiet moment, the moment of still beauty or gentle relationship that came forward. How, my mind continued to work, could that be?
I do not know for sure, as few of us can of such things, but for the moment, it seems fairly clear: our greatest moments are not those of triumph or success, but rather those where we acquiesce to a still time, to a time apart from the whirring of planned human events. These, almost by definition, would occur in situations where nothing much is happening, where we are not wrapped up in doing or performing.
If true, this is a finding of the greatest import. We are always told by old-timers that the greatest thing in life is family and a few close friends. We are often, but not always, told by very successful people that success hasn't given them the closure that they had imagined. In a recent finding by a long-term Harvard study, they found that the three most important things for happiness are, simply, good relationships with the family (all three, almost ridiculously, were different takes on the same thing). Yet, as important as good relationships may be, it seems that the missing element to these beliefs and findings is the state of being of the person. Strong family makes a place where we can simply be, not having to perform or be anything other than what we are, whatever we might think that is at the moment. Yet, so does a quiet, uneventful day that somehow takes away our stray thoughts to focus us without effort on our lives, right then and there - as it is without frills. And there we find, usually without realizing it (until perhaps years later) that being - just being - is the most wonderful thing.
Already my mind is gearing up again: time to edit a book, call a publisher, get this life going! Yet I know it will be the barren trees in a field of snow that I have witnessed while doing nothing in particular that I will long for when all is closing down and the end to it all is near. FK
And so it seems that at different stages of life, we are imprinted with those memories that we consider most eventful and exciting. It seems true, but recently I have found that this is not the case. I doubt I am alone in this.
I was not sitting on a bench, but laying back in a recliner after a too-large lunch of black beans, rice and carne mechada, a great and cheap combo that I first came to know in Venezuela. At one point, I drifted into that half-sleep state that brings dreams almost to consciousness, where one would think I would be occupied with memories of our last trip to Costa Rica - or, at the very least, some darker anxiety dream about work. But instead, in it I was reliving a memory that I had not known that I had even retained. I was in 6th grade and was visiting a new friend at his home for the first time, a place a few miles from my own. Who it was didn't matter, because it was not about him or anything to do with him. Rather, it was about the scenery. It was a moderately cold day, slightly above freezing, so that the light snow cover had become a little melty. The sky was gray and the trees still and leafless, as one would expect in late winter. The weather, in fact, was about what we are having now in Wisconsin, and I would not say it is anything to write home about, but here...the memory was so exquisite in feeling that I could barely stand it. It's sweetness, simply the being there, provoked such deep nostalgia that I had to wake up and shake it off before I became too lost in the loss of it, in its being gone forever. But why, why such longing for a nothing day so long ago?
My beaver-like waking mind, ever trying to figure things out, then decided to hold a little experiment. I let myself drift into other memories, with the intent that they be the ones that bring the greatest pleasure. Without fail, they were all similar to the first - memories of small things, of a pleasant day on the beach, or outside in a sunny field, or in a canoe at night looking at the stars. No great sex, great deals, or great dumps came to mind, although they surely would have immediately after. But these were not the ones that stuck. Rather, always, it was the quiet moment, the moment of still beauty or gentle relationship that came forward. How, my mind continued to work, could that be?
I do not know for sure, as few of us can of such things, but for the moment, it seems fairly clear: our greatest moments are not those of triumph or success, but rather those where we acquiesce to a still time, to a time apart from the whirring of planned human events. These, almost by definition, would occur in situations where nothing much is happening, where we are not wrapped up in doing or performing.
If true, this is a finding of the greatest import. We are always told by old-timers that the greatest thing in life is family and a few close friends. We are often, but not always, told by very successful people that success hasn't given them the closure that they had imagined. In a recent finding by a long-term Harvard study, they found that the three most important things for happiness are, simply, good relationships with the family (all three, almost ridiculously, were different takes on the same thing). Yet, as important as good relationships may be, it seems that the missing element to these beliefs and findings is the state of being of the person. Strong family makes a place where we can simply be, not having to perform or be anything other than what we are, whatever we might think that is at the moment. Yet, so does a quiet, uneventful day that somehow takes away our stray thoughts to focus us without effort on our lives, right then and there - as it is without frills. And there we find, usually without realizing it (until perhaps years later) that being - just being - is the most wonderful thing.
Already my mind is gearing up again: time to edit a book, call a publisher, get this life going! Yet I know it will be the barren trees in a field of snow that I have witnessed while doing nothing in particular that I will long for when all is closing down and the end to it all is near. FK
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