Friends chide me for my gloom. Cheer up, they jostle. They are right, of course – from their point of view. Who wants a sourpuss at the picnic! Yet isn’t candor an obligation among friends? Doesn’t truthfulness overrule jollity as a commanding principle? I want to sweeten your life – a no-brainer! But does faking it accomplish that? Isn’t the grief that dares not disclose itself more terrible than articulate tears?
I am happy in my life – that is, in my little circle of family, wife, friends, dog, house. I love to walk in the woods. I love to write. I love playing cribbage with Jane at day’s end before a tasty dinner, while we track another quirky cop. I love music – and literature – and good plays – and you who are reading these words notwithstanding my occasional lament. Personally, I’ve never been happier – or more fulfilled. I am not depressed.
But when I exit the garden gate onto the avenue, oy! I won’t repeat myself. I feel America and the world are slip-sliding toward Armageddon. I wish I didn’t feel that way, but I do – and every headline seems to confirm my dread. I am not persuaded we will “get through this” or “come out the other side,” as our bromides console. Account me a millenarian, chiliast, doomsayer, Ezekiel on his soapbox. Where o where’s the offramp from this state of mind!
The only fix I know is to change the subject, redirect one’s gaze toward a happier view. I am happy reading poems, which few others are. I am happy playing online backgammon (though the algorithm cheats!). I am happy at cribbage, as I mentioned, and being with pals. A stiff drink mollifies my mood – but only one – that way madness and headaches lie.
Henry entertains, endears.
I could play the jester, I suppose. But isn’t preterition a form of deceit? The elephant in the room remains. “Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?”
My M.O. is to try to write engagingly though my thoughts are bleak. Mode over mood. Good writing sweetens the bitterest conclusion. Publishers may mistake Gulliver’s Travels for a pleasant children’s book. I know few darker indictments of our species, but it’s fun to read. Is any play more searing than King Lear done right? Yet we eagerly gather to bathe in its beauty.
Our obvious moral mandate is to make the most of our moment. That means making the best of it. Sometimes the sun is shining, sometimes the storm howls. Take as much comfort as you can without deluding yourself – that’s my prescription – and self-admonishment. Make your best dish from the ingredients available. Play the hand you’ve been dealt.
It takes work being cheerful. The more we look, the less we may like. MAD magazine’s Alfred E. Neumann was a Moses of sorts with his goofy grin. Ignorance is bliss – “What, me worry?” Dog-pal Henry urges a comparable – but more dignified – peroration: Be glad, Dad!
When a hurricane’s forecast, homeowners and shopkeepers board up their places and heap sandbags without pausing to grumble. If you live by the ocean, hurricanes are a foreseeable risk, get busy rescuing all you can.
We all live by the ocean. None of us is safe from History’s tantrums. For our loved ones as much as for ourselves, we should be our happiest possible without taking refuge in idiocy. More crucial than ever to be honest and kind and cling to those we love.
The salvation of the world is beyond my strength. But I can bid you “Good morning” in six hundred words.