Collected Wisdom

09/11/20 • 4 min

I took an Authentic Happiness Inventory online today which compared my relative happiness to that of 120,000 other respondents. It is a legit survey, put together by Dr. Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center. I got a 3.74 out of 5. Hmm. I think of myself as a 4.3, but I know that comparison is the thief of joy, so I take my 3.74 and make the most of it.

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All of the state parks in Vermont were full last weekend because everybody and his dog is Vermonting this summer instead of going to Europe. We found a campsite on Airbnb. John contacted our host by email the day before we made the two-hour drive. “We’ve made some changes since we first put up the listing,” she wrote. “We now have a dish-washing station and a barrel to protect your food from bears and such.” John and I joked our whole drive down about the ‘and such’ part of her note wondering what qualifies. Dewey ignored our banter flaring his nostrils as his ears flapped in the wind out the car window.

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Around the Bend

During the pandemic I don’t seem to know what day it is. My regular work has become so entirely irregular that the foundation upon which my full catastrophe—as Zorba the Greek would call it—once balanced now rests upon a teeter totter whose lead-based paint flakes off its dried out 2x6 and creaks on rusty hinges in a wind which is very strong today.

Dried out maple leaves fly by my window on unseasonably warm gusts, 35-40 knots out of the Southwest. This is no sultry Nat King Cole Autumn Leaves kind of wind, ‘C'est une chanson Qui nous ressemble’ but a blaster that makes all the apples drop.

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