Bryson's Thoughts on Happiness

I saw a little curly-headed boy at Borders today, with a round Charlie Brown face and hair the lightest shade of brown, pink cheeked and with dear little dents of dimples which popped out every time he smiled.

He was toddling around Starbucks with clumsy little legs and from time to time he would gurgle with pleasure. He'd wander round and get lost under different seats and from time to time I would see a little head peering out from under my chair. He kept on laughing for no reason at all, and seemed to be getting high just on stumbling around from place to place.

If only walking around made me that happy.

I sat in Starbucks for quite a long time reading "Notes from a Small Island" today. Not the "Notes from a Smaller Island" by Neil Humphries which I'm always raving about, but "Notes from a Small Island" by Bill Bryson. He talks about how he does a trip around the UK, and the book is chock full of funny anecdotes. He makes me want to go to some places especially, like Lincoln (which he says seems to be in a world of its own), Durham (which he says has the best cathedral in the world), and Glasgow (which seems to be full of people saying "I hae nae poo").

Anyway, the little boy toddling around getting high on the aroma of Starbucks reminded me of a bit in the book that said it was well impossible to be unhappy.

Bill Bryson goes on about how you can't possibly be unhappy when you remember that you are yourself. Your father probably emitted zillions of sperm in his lifetime, and out of these emissions and out of 240 000 sperm in just one emission one of the little buggers survived and swam up that English Channel to make yourself. The odds say that you could just as easily have been a beetle. So it's pretty amazing that you are you.

Bill Bryson also says that it's impossible to be unhappy when you remember that you exist. You hadn't existed for eons, and you will cease to exist soon. So this brief moment of time, where you are picking your nose and wondering when this entry is going to end so that you can have your cheesecake dessert, is one of the rarest moments in history, simply because you exist in it.

I wonder if the little blond Charlie Brown personling knew all this in his subconscious. Perhaps that was why he was so happy even though he hadn't anything tangibly delightful to be happy about.

Life for a little child is so charmingly simple. I wish I could see things with such clarity and honesty and contentment, at times.