On the Table

Over the years, our mailman has become quite friendly. A shaggy, white-haired, white-bearded fellow who more than once has posed as Santa Claus, he stops most days in the shade of our juniper to shuffle his trays of mail before continuing on his route. He sees nothing but comedy in his job, and in the inner workings of the post office, in his view, the ill logic, the inefficiency, the contradictory nature of almost everything that happens. To him, every day is a good day, whatever the weather, and however late he might be expected to work while helping finish other carriers’ routes or his own. He’s fifty-nine and once died of a heart attack — and then, miraculously, fraught moments later, his life was restored to him. Recently he said that he had told someone that he’s always happy, and that the other person had replied, with defensive, skeptical certainty, “No, you’re not.” And I said, “Because he can’t imagine it himself, he assumes it’s impossible for you.” And he said, “Exactly.”

Thinking about it now, I have to observe that this other person’s assumption is right in most cases — a tragedy of epic proportions. Assuming happiness is impossible all but guarantees the result. One might as well come out and say, “I’m miserable, so you must be too. Your supposed happiness is of no interest to me. I’d rather stick with my misery than understand and go to the heart of your joy.” It’s an ego thing. After a lifetime of ups and downs, elation and tribulation, abiding happiness is a threat to one’s hard-won identity. And why is it a threat? Because, deep, deep down, where torches flicker and veins of gold glimmer on the walls, everyone knows that they are not their identity. Scary stuff. Or, as we used to say, Heavy, man.

In my childhood, I never thought about happiness. I don’t think about it now, unless a circumstance such as this arises. Do I know what happiness is? Can I describe it to your satisfaction? Is there really any need? Or will you demand some some kind of discipline or hard-to-achieve method for enjoying what is truly your natural birthright?

I might be wrong, or right only for myself, but I think we already hold the key to happiness. We need only appreciate the breath in our bodies and the miracle of our conscious existence to realize it’s always available to us. The appreciation, though, must be of an abiding nature, not just a moment of forgetfulness that takes us away from ourselves, because the cause of that forgetfulness is always temporary. If we go on trying to repeat the conditions, we’re no longer living in a present rich with wonder and surprise, but are caught up in a cycle of dead experience. We are the mailman on the table, waiting to be revived.

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