Too Much Happiness

I've been up since dawn reading Alice Munro. This latest collection disturbs me, as it should. What I love about Munro is how she gets under the skin of things. She lays bare perversions and shadows that most people cover with high-gloss concealer.

Last night I went out with a long-time friend to celebrate her 42nd Birthday. We've known each other almost 30 years. We met in grade 9 math class where our teacher, Mr. Garrett, would says things like, "Battle back, gang. Battle back," when he peppered us with math questions. T and I would sit at the back of the room and slump into our chairs at this admonition. We were not the battling types. Yet, here we are, 28 years later, both struggling with ex-husbands who do everything they can to incite and harass us and evade responsibility for their kids.

We saw Letters to Juliet after our dinner. It was long on car shots and short on substance, making too little use of great actors. Destiny also figured prominently in this love story, which, in this case, made me feel decidedly put off, because real life can't measure up to the expectations that films like this promote. Perhaps destiny is just the label we apply to what we feel we must sanctify.

Not sure. Not sure of much these days. I have to reply to court documents and can't. I prefer distractions.

I read 10-10-10 by Suzy Welch on the weekend. In the concluding chapters somewhere she talks about meeting friends at an event and them trying to compile a list of 12 truly happy people and how hard it was to come up with that many names. She counted herself and her husband in, but had trouble with others. She credited her own happiness to her use of 10-10-10 thinking, which involves considering the consequences of one's decision in relation to a 10 minute, 10 month, and 10 year time frame. This isn't a terribly revolutionary concept, but she claims it changed her life and countless others. I often consider the outcome of my actions, but the problem is attending to my thoughts about that outcome. Strangely, Welch doesn't really admit to doing this herself, even about the most important decision of her life . . . having and affair with a married man, her now husband, Jack.

If only decisions could be made easy. I don't believe they can, because we are always the ones making decisions and our motivations are far more complex than we can explain or anticipate.

Is happiness a matter of degree?