Make Someone Happy

Meta cognition is a hobby of mine. How did I get to the thought which I’m at now? Where did it begin its own veering? When stepping backwards into the footprints you left behind, are you not confounded by the fact that the things which thrill us today and the things which weigh us today push our thoughts in their own self-fulfilling directions? Can you not see in your own meta cognition, that even our wandering thoughts are subject to our subconscious wills? We think what we think because we want what we want. And we want what we want because we feel what we feel. And we feel what we feel because we infuse what we sense in the world with what we experience in our own selves.

What we feel has the root of buried thought, and veers off in directions of growth according to our experiences in the world. Like a plant pushing through the crust that encounters an obstacle and diverts into what is at once truly itself and also shaped by the world.

Today, rain falls outside in mid-tone pitches that steady a soul. Neither high nor low, the tiny thuds hit the grass, the ground, the hard surfaces of outside things and like a choir the raindrops hum. Inside, other noises have this organ drone as a foundation, and they are highlighted. The jingle of keys, the vacuum of doors, springs of turning in beds, the tinkling of cups and spoons. Is it loneliness that sucks you in? Are you overwhelmed by tasks and tiredness? Are you taken aback by the smearing of illusions?

Or maybe you are driving alone. And maybe you hear the spray of wet under tires, the steady sweep of the windshield wipers, the far away windy sound of the cars on the road. These sounds become your field where thoughts are sown. And you drive without knowing you’re driving, and thoughts fill your mind so that when you pull into the parking place, you don’t get out right away, but luxuriate in them. And breathe. And rest your head back while your mind creates them each. They will linger there for awhile and play for you as you begin your day like a playlist, a montage in a movie, an orchestral score beneath the thoughts of today. Beneath the feelings of today.

“Is anyone happy?” My friend asked me yesterday. “Is anyone happy? Because it just seems like everyone is struggling.” It does seem like that. It does feel like that. Like everyone is just barely holding on. Hoping there’s hope but not really finding any that sticks around from one thought to another thought.

Why now? What is worse in this field now? Can it be that the awfulness of authority, the injustice of our culture, the acceptance of things hollow and base and low and deplorable, can it be that they have dribbled their despicable ire over the living, trying world like poisoned icing. And like swallowed pink saccharin, its cancerous sweet deceives and teases us with platitudes and sarcasm of the meanest sort. What is prying apart the ties that have bound us? What is loosening the tongues of ignorance and bias?  If the strongest among us panic, if the most tender among us despair, if the most reliable among us freeze; what will become?

It is fearsome to consider.

If it is not the horrible big that has poured down, maybe it’s the biting little that has grown up and around. The weed that sprung innocuous in April. Bloomed innocently in June. And choked the life out of the garden in August. Is it pushing forward in line? Is it snide and mocking treatment of the neighbor? Is it aloof passing of the distraught and perilous stranger? Is it the heaping on of harmful untruths to oneself? Of unkindness to our reaching, trying, imperfect, slipping selves?

We are so connected. Our evident struggle is proof of that. We are so connected. And from whence these unhappy feelings, these empty wants, these hopeless thoughts have come, we are destined to overcome them together.

So my words have brought your perspective down among the root of gloomy thoughts into sad feelings. And if you had escaped it today, I am sorry for that. But I wanted to say something. Let’s try. Let’s keep trying. For each other. Let’s do something good. Something real and good and sincere. Let’s make someone feel better. Understood and valued and heard. Let’s make someone see hope. Glimmering and shining and delightful. Let’s make someone think happy thoughts and tell each other about it. Because they are wading through our field. Let’s just try and keep trying.

Go up into the poison and scrape it off our cake. Go down among our spindly, leggy selves and nourish one another in kindness and love and attention. Care for ourselves in understanding and truth and blessed love. Let’s make someone happy.

LISTEN TO: “Make Someone Happy” by Jimmy Durante

It’s so important to
Make someone happy,
Make just one someone happy
Make just one heart —the heart you sing to.

One smile that cheers you,
One face that lights when it nears you,
One girl you’re everything to.

Fame if you win it,
Comes and goes in a minute.
Where’s the real stuff in life to cling to?

Love is the answer,
Someone to love is the answer.
Once you’ve found her, build your world around her.

Make someone happy,
Make just one someone happy,
And you will be happy, too.