Great pleasures in small things

I just took myself out to breakfast. It had been a while. The waitress brought me a paper, which was filled with the usual items of horror, mayhem and atrocity. Nothing is as predictable as the morning paper. When breakfast came, I set the paper aside and after a while I marveled at how much joy I was getting from eating breakfast.

History tells us that the world has always been in a mess. Yet we get by, "by the skin of our teeth" to use the phrase in Wilder's brilliant if overly optimistic play. Yes, we've survived despite it all. But only because the "weapons of mass destruction" haven't been big enough. If there's one area in which our species has progressed without qualification, it's in building more destructive weapons. Now we have the right kind of fanatics to use them, young and smart men who pursue an eternity in heaven with 43 virgins with energetic passion -- put a nuke in the hands of one, and we'll see how much skin our teeth has. If this doesn't happen (and how can it not?), Nature at least will show us who's boss, eventual revenge against the "prodding fingers" (cummings) of our arrogant "progress."

Against this backdrop, no wonder "live in the moment" is good advice. With blinders on. Look at the small picture, tend your own garden (Voltaire).

I think more than a few folks locked up in our asylums are there not because they can't perceive reality but because they perceive it too well -- but can't deal with it. They can't escape reality, they haven't learned how to filter it out. A cold, hard, serious look at reality would drive anyone mad. You get by by pushing the reality of the world away and filling the space with the great pleasures you find in the small things of your life.

Hence a solitary breakfast out on a rainy morning.