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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
I was at the office today, in the middle of a pre-annual review chat with my boss, and she asked me what seemed like a very simple question:
“Are you happy?”
I knew what she meant. And I knew what the right answer was. But things are never quite so simple. Not when you live in my head. Here’s the long version of my answer to her:
(Okay, quite long. Deal with it, Gabbo.)
As the years go by, I find myself becoming more philosophical. This has several effects on my day-to-day existence.
I’m more contemplative, for one. In the past, I’d often observe situations — particularly those fraught with drama — proverbially “watching from the sidelines”. Now I’m even a bit further detached. It’s more like watching from my couch, with a feed from a sideline camera. Also, it’s on TiVo. And I made popcorn. Much better.
I notice I’m also less prone to emotional ups and downs. I mean, we’ve all got the sun engulfing the earth and the eventual heat death of the universe to look forward to. What’s a loss by your favorite team or a big job promotion or the birth of a child in the face of that? It’s all relative. Settle down, already.
“Clearly, the main effect of being more philosophical is also becoming several orders of magnitude more insufferable in conversation.”
Clearly, the main effect of being more philosophical is also becoming several orders of magnitude more insufferable in conversation. You do not want to see me at the punch bowl at your holiday party, let me tell you.
I haven’t always been so bad — though I’ve pondered life’s various big questions for as long as I can remember. I thought I had things all settled, with a personal philosophy I adopted many years ago. As I put it in another post quite some time back:
“But the way I see it is this: if you’re happy with your life — if you really sit down and think about where you are and what you do, and you’re truly, informedly happy about your situation — then you can’t really have any regrets.”
I got by with this outlook for a good twenty years or more. I tried to learn from mistakes, sure — and I made enough that I couldn’t help but learn something, if only new and creative ways to sign apology cards. But otherwise, the sentiment above was all I needed, no problem.
Until there were problems. Like the fact that “informedly” is probably, in fact, not actually a word. So there’s that.
Worse, though, is the gaping hole left in the reasoning. If happy, then no regrets, fine. But what if not happy? Or unsure if happy? Or slightly less happy than that really good time I had last week, but now it’s raining and my favorite team lost and that “heat death” thing is only getting closer every second? What then?
The philosophy says nothing. It implies, perhaps, that one should then form regrets. But when I reached that point a few years ago, I decided I didn’t really want any. Let’s face it, I’d gone two decades without any regrets; I wouldn’t even know how to take care of one. You’ve got to feed those things and spend time with them and walk them in the middle of the night — who has time for that? Plus, they’re like rabbits; you let one or two of them in the house, and suddenly you’re overrun with little regrets, stomping through the living room and shouting and peeing on the carpets. No, thanks.
I needed a new philosophy, but the “no regrets” thing was apparently non-negotiable. So I took a look at the other side of the equation: just what is “happy”, anyway?
That’s where things pretty well fell apart. Quick, flippant little happy “life mantras” were out, and serious philosophical set in. And took root. And put all its little philosophical deodorants and vitamins on a shelf in the bathroom, because it was going to be staying a while.
Not everyone has these problems, of course. Some people go their whole lives without the slightest concern for existential matters, and they seem at least as happy for it.
(Or “happy”, to use a distinction that wouldn’t make the first bit of sense to them.
Happy is as happy does, I suppose. I think Nietzsche said that. Or Grover from Sesame Street. One or the other.)
Take my wife, for instance. I once asked her if she had a personal philosophy — probably because I was ready to adopt the first decent one I heard that didn’t come at the end of a sneaker commercial. Her reply:
“That’s really more your thing.”
I tried to do something with that. “Always pass the buck in life.” Or: “You do your thing; I’ll do my thing.” But it didn’t help. Frankly, her personal philosophy is kind of crappy.
So I went back to “happy”. If I didn’t feel quite as happy, what did it mean? How did I get there? Should I just shut up about it and pick a better favorite team or something?
I turned to books. Lots of books. I’m guessing that everyone who comes to a similar point in life believes that somehow, they’re the only one. Their existential crisis is unique and unknowable and unfathomable to others, especially people just doing “their thing”.
And then they search for books with “Happiness” in the title and find fourteen kajillion volumes explaining the how and the why and the neurotransmitters and psychopathology and evolutionary cross-wiring and social intertwinery that makes it all tick, and sometimes not tick, and other times lose power in the middle of the night and make you late for work.
So I dutifully read a bunch of books with “Happiness” in the title, and I learned some science and a little psychiatry and seventeen kinds of philosophical outlooks, and none of them was quite what I was missing. And eventually, like saying a word over and over until it sounds foreign and odd, “happy” just stopped making any sense.
What is “happy”, I asked myself again. It’s just a ratio — not even that, but an internal impression of a ratio — of pleasurable experiences to painful ones. More pleasure over time, with less pain, feels more like “happy”. And what are pleasure and pain? Responses to certain neurotransmitters. Instinctive reactions. Endorphin cascades. As I began to understand it, “happy” at its core really boiled down to chemistry and physics and psychology and all sorts of other classes I nearly failed in college.
Yuck. I’m not going back there.
Still, the basics clicked. “Happy”, I decided, isn’t really a definable thing. If I’ve felt 51% good and 49% sad — or believe that’s the ratio, at least — am I “happy”? Would one unhappy thing, like an untied shoelace, tip the scales? Do I need a two-thirds majority, like I’m passing a law in Congress? And what’s the time frame — would I say I’m “happy since lunch, but generally miserable since Tuesday”?
Happy got hard. And one thing I know is in my personal philosophy — apart from not caring or feeding for regrets — is that I don’t want to work very hard at it. So “happy” is out, as a concept. Along with an awful lot of other things — but my boss didn’t ask me about those, and this has gone on long enough already.
So, how did I answer her? I don’t say that I’m “happy” these days — not because I’m not, but because the question has lost all its meaning. Still, I didn’t want her thinking I was about to run off to some other job, or thinking of coming in and pulling all the fire alarms and re-enacting Flashdance some day.
Also, I didn’t have time to explain all the above to her. She doesn’t want that.
Oh, sure, I know you didn’t want that, either. But you’re not signing my paychecks. So nyah.
In the end, I answered as positively, as honestly and as philosophically as possible:
“Well… I’m probably not unhappy.”
See? Philosophy can be simple, after all.
…
I’m so getting fired tomorrow, aren’t I?
Permalink | No CommentsI don’t have a problem blazing my own trail. Walking the path less taken. Beating my own drum, non-euphemistically speaking.
Still. Sometimes I wonder.
In the summer, the company I work for offered employees a chance to buy into a CSA. Naturally, I signed up right away.
(I didn’t know what a “CSA” was, exactly. I thought maybe it stood for “Chocolate Stout Apocalypse”.
Not that I want the world to end. But if we have to go some day…)
Anyway, I was informed soon after that “CSA” (in this context) actually means “community supported agriculture”. (Mine was better.) And that signing up meant weekly deliveries of large quantities of strange vegetables and gourds that I and my wife would be expected to eat.
Or freeze. Or hollow out into festive organic candle holders. Or take into the bedroom. Something. The farmer people didn’t care, so long as we used up all our veggies in time for the next cornucopial cavalcade the following week.
“And I wouldn’t know what to do with a rutabaga in bed if it put on high heels and fishnets and called me ‘Uncle Wiggles’.”
And so, we ate. And ate. And ate some more.
Because we’d hurt ourselves carving squashes into tchotchkes. And I wouldn’t know what to do with a rutabaga in bed if it put on high heels and fishnets and called me “Uncle Wiggles”.
(It’s a personal failing, I know. I’ll just have to manage the shame as best I can.)
The point is, I signed us up for the CSA, and all summer long we had a steady stream of vegetables coming into the kitchen. Bell peppers. Eggplants. Potatoes. And kale — lord, so much kale. I’ve never seen so much puckered-up green stuff in my life. It was like “cold water pool day” at an Oscar the Grouch cosplay convention.
(Too far? Too far. Meh.)
But the missus and I weren’t alone, awash in our sea of leafy green. Oh, no. The boxes of farm goodies were delivered to my office, every Tuesday afternoon. And there were lots of goodies each week. Twelve, fourteen boxes — maybe more. Some people even opted for bigger baskets, or the “fresh eggs” add-on.
How did they eat all that stuff each week? I don’t know. Maybe they have families full of small at-scurvy-risk children. Maybe they’re feeding hippopotami in their basements. Maybe they have kohlrabi fetishes. Not my department. All I know is that a good dozen or more shipments showed up and went home with my colleagues, week in and week out, all summer long.
A few weeks ago, the CSA announced their “fall offering”. Same deal. Veggies delivered. An avalanche of radishes and zucchinis and big flat leafy things I never figured out, and some stuff that looked like a tree stump and a carrot had bumped uglies and made a thing, and I don’t know what half that stuff was, ever. But I ate it. Mostly. And a lot of the non-stump looking varieties were probably even good for me.
So when the fall menu rolled around, I signed up again. My wife encouraged it. And she makes some tasty meals out of oddball greenery, somehow, so I did it. The new “fall boxes” started coming last month.
To me. Just me. At my desk. Because no one else in the company signed up for the fall CSA.
Not one. Fifteen people, maybe, and they all. Dropped. Out. I’m now “walking my own less beaten drum”, or whatever — though I hadn’t really meant to, in this case — and frankly, I’m a little worried.
I mean, why would everybody drop out of this thing? I can see attrition, sure. There are only so many collard greens you can stuff down your facehole in a season before you say no mas.
But everybody? Is there something wrong with these baskets? Did they get together and decide to boycott over cheap quality or something, and not include me? Am I eating pesticides and worker pee, or what? Are the turnips not free-range enough? Have the farmers sent us rat poison? DID SOMEONE FIND A SPIDER IN THEIR BASKET?!?
I don’t have these answers. What I have is a personal vegetable-and-possibly-arsenic weekly delivery service, a veggie crisper stuffed with celery and cilantro and shit I never knew people were meant to put in their mouths, and one hell of a lot of doubt about this whole “fall offering” deal.
I guess none of it has killed me just yet. But that doesn’t mean it won’t. Or that the spiders aren’t hanging out behind the mustard in the fridge, just biding their time to strike. Also, that rutabaga in there keeps giving me the stink eye.
I don’t trust these autumn veggies, people. I just don’t.
Permalink | No CommentsI have a lot of bad ideas. Ten-plus years of archives here should be plenty enough proof of that.
But sometimes, I have good ideas. Or at least, ideas that seem good.
And then turn out less good. Usually a lot less good. And ultimately bad.
Take the “Dining Deck”, for instance. Way back in January, I was shopping in this little store near our place called the Meat House.
“I tend to only patronize establishments that advertise something I want in the very name of the store.”
(For the record, I don’t do a lot of shopping. I tend to only patronize establishments that advertise something I want in the very name of the store. As in, “Meat House”. Or “Beer Warehouse”. Or “Ye Olde Spicy Burrito Shoppe”.)
I’d just finished a successful shopping trip — by which I mean, I was lugging fourteen pounds of sausage and three six packs to the register — when something on the counter caught my eye. It looked like a pack of playing cards, and was labeled “Dining Deck”. Between mouthfuls of complimentary cheese samples — which I was totally still entitled to, because I hadn’t physically left the premises yet — I asked the cashier what sort of a thing that was.
He spun me a tale of magic and culinary wonder. The “Dining Deck”, he explained, held fifty cards, each specific to a different restaurant and entitling the bearer to a ten-dollar discount on a meal. Any day, any time — no restrictions, other than a minimum purchase of an entree or two. The pack cost twenty bucks to buy, right then and there, and the cards wouldn’t expire until 2014.
Now, I’m no math major. But I could see — after doodling “air math” for a moment to be sure — that twenty bucks was less than saving ten dollars fifty times. Like, a lot less. Millions, maybe. So it seemed like a Good Idea™ to buy the deck. A very Good Idea™, indeed. I couldn’t afford not to.
So I did. And I took my new prize home to the missus, nestled between two fat bratwursts and a cold delicious Tramp Stamp.
(Er, that’s the prize that was nestled. Not my wife. Keep it clean out there, slappy.)
I explained the deal to my wife, and we opened the deck, browsing over all the cards. There were sushi places and Italian joints and bars ‘n’ grills and tapas houses and Korean barbecues and restaurants of every kind. Which was perfect. We love all sorts of food, and though we don’t go out terribly often — maybe once a week, on average — that still gave us time to sample all the myriad delights of the Dining Deck, one by one and at our leisure. We drifted off to sleep that night, with visions of pork dumplings and truffle fries and patatas bravas in our heads. And I was sure, at last, I’d truly had a Good Idea™.
Ahem. Fast-forward to now, and the Dining Deck here on the table, full — not completely, but almost completely of cards. As perfect as it sounded, ultimately the proof is in the pudding we never made it out to order after a meal. Where did I go so wrong?
I forgot we were lazy.
Not completely lazy, mind you. And not always lazy. But when it comes to going out to dinner — usually after a week of work, and maybe a Saturday of catching up on chores and writing and gym time and sleep and whatever the TiVo slaved over a hot cable network to tape for us — we don’t put a lot of effort into the decision. We go out, yes. We have a good time. But we’re lazy. Food lazy.
Which means we travel as little as possible. Luckily — also, plannedly, which is totally a sequence of letters I’m claiming is a word — we live in a neighborhood where we can walk to several kinds of restaurants. Within an eight-block or so radius, we can get Mexican food (both “bar style” and semi-authentic), tapas, sushi, Korean, Italian, oysters, steak, Irish pub fare, Thai, pizza and more. That list may look vaguely familiar — it’s quite similar to what’s offered in the “Dining Deck”.
Only those restaurants are generally further away. Like, more than a mile. Garcon, please.
Of course, we get the Deck out now and then. We used the cards for the really-really-uber-local joints in the first month — so I suppose we at least didn’t lose money on the deal. But since then, we tend to flip through the cards, pick out a nice-sounding place — a Chinese restaurant, say — and get all psyched up to go… and then think:
“Huh. We’d have to drive there. And park. And drive back. And then walk back from the parking spot, for crissakes. If we want Chinese, why don’t we just go to our usual place down the street?”
And there’s no good answer why not. It’s right there, unlike the place that gives you ten dollars back. Maybe if they gave you ten dollars, a free cab ride and a piggyback from the taxi to the table, we’d try it out. But they don’t have a deck for that kind of deal. Not in this country, at least.
So we’ve got eight weeks left in the year, and forty-eight unused cards in the Dining Deck, collecting dust on our table. It’s not like we’re getting any less lazy over time, so I’m not sure how they’re going to get used before 2014. I guess what I’m saying is:
Anybody in the Boston area into giving out taxi trips and piggyback rides? There’s a free appetizer in it for you. Or a cocktail, take your pick. Best deal in town, this side of Tequila Warehouse.
Permalink | No CommentsI knew this would happen. It always happens.
As I wrote a few days ago (toward the end of a Heath Ledger / Levi’s dominatrix / casual sex / Stephen Baldwin something-or-other), I never know how much Halloween candy to buy.
The big risk is buying too little. The last thing you want on Trick or Treat night is to be staring down at the empty sack of some quivery-lipped four-year-old princess and telling her that you’re vewy sowwy, but you’re fresh out of mini Baby Ruth bars, and maybe try again next year.
Because she will totally kick you in the junk.
To prevent such crotch-crackery, the missus and I always buy a big bag of goodies and have it ready, by the door, in the requisite spooky bowl.
(I don’t know what makes it a “spooky bowl”, exactly. Sure, it’s orange. But I used to eat popcorn out of the thing, and I haven’t seen any poltergeist Orville Reddenbachers hanging around the pantry making googly skull faces at the Tostitos. Whatever.)
Every year, we do this. And we diligently wait by the door for trick-or-treaters.
Well. Maybe not right by the door. More “near the door”. On the couch, in the living room. Watching Seinfeld reruns, probably, and scarfing popcorn out of microwave bags.
(Yeah. Take that, Mister Spookybowl.)
Okay, so we don’t put an enormous amount of effort into our Halloween hospitality. I’ll own that. Still, we’re always prepared. And it could be a lot worse. Before this condo, we lived in a house with forty-something stairs up to the porch. My wife was in law school at the time, so she didn’t have time to hand out candy. And my wife was in law school at the time, so I didn’t want to talk to anybody. Most years there, we stuck a plastic jack o’lantern on the stoop below the porch — “hey, kids, we saved you the last six steps!” — with a glob of Smarties and a sign reading “TAKE ONE”.
(Most years, the candy was all gone, probably in the first ten minutes. One year, we lost all the candy, and the plastic jack o’ bucket. Another year, it rained and made such a mess of the sugar and signage we didn’t know what to do with it.
It’s probably still buried under the porch, hanging out with the ghost of Jiffy Pops past.)
The families upstairs in our building have kids. We figure we can at least count on them to come down, and we’ll shove handfuls of this junk into their sacks — thus annoying their parents at our sugar-enabling of their children. And making more noise for ourselves, as the tykes scamper back and forth above our heads.
“Or, since we’re kidless, assumed we’d give out something stupid like celery sticks. Or box wine. Or stock tips.”
Yeah, we really didn’t think this through. It’s probably a good thing the neighbor kids didn’t actually stop by. Their parents probably planned further ahead. Or, since we’re kidless, assumed we’d give out something stupid like celery sticks. Or box wine. Or stock tips.
The thing is, not only did the folks above seek their candied booty elsewhere — apparently, so did the entire neighborhood. Our bowl went untouched, our buzzer unrung and our Seinfeld rerun — we were watching the one where Elaine eats Peterman’s antique wedding cake; a classic — uninterrupted.
Until 8:30pm, long after we figured the little goblins and cowboys and pint-sized Ruth Bader GInsburgs would all be in bed. Our doorbell rang; I grabbed the bowl and went to investigate, chomping a Three Musketeers.
It was two girls in some sort of unidentifiable (by me, anyway) costumes, maybe eighteen or twenty years old. One might have been a ghost. Or a swan. Or Colonel Sanders. I’m not very good at the costume guessing game.
They asked for candy — I tried giving them half a bowl each, but they declined and took a single piece, the ungreedy little harpies. But this being Boston, they also had an ulterior and politically-driven motive — they asked if I’d sign some petition they were touting.
I don’t usually sign petitions. Or anything else, if I can help it. And — note: Boston — there are plenty of clipboard pushers roaming the streets and knocking on doors for all sorts of causes around here. It’s like a Jehovah’s Witness convention, without all the Jeebus.
But this struck me as a singularly ingenious strategy for stumping. It’s trick or treat night, so people are inclined to open their doors. They’re technically asking for candy, so you can’t even say they’re completely co-opting the occasion — and they came out (so far as I know) after the official T ‘n’ T hours. Plus, the not-Colonel Sanders girl was kind of cute.
They’d clearly covered all their bases. So I signed the petition, whatever it was for. Something about getting the minimum wage raised, or getting it lowered, or farming children to India in exchange for sweatshops. Or sweatshirts. Something. I don’t know.
All I know is, those two took candy. And that’s two pieces less than the ginormo spooky bowlful we still have to go through. If they’d have taken the rest, I’d have probably signed over the deed.
I guess what I’m saying is: hey, we’ve got candy. Who wants some?
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