The Measure of Happiness

Last month my sister, her husband, and I celebrated my 60th with lobsters, steamers, Pinot Grigio on Watchic Pond. An early evening breeze fended the mosquitos away from the dock. My brother-in-law dressed accordingly; tee-shirt, shorts, and no shoes. Neither of us had shaved for days.

"What you think?" My brother-in-law pulled out a pipe. His health had improved dramatically since his retirement three years ago.

"Nothing much has changed here." The lake shore was covered by tall pines, hiding the numerous summer camps.

"That's what I think too." My sister and he were planning to spend the summer here not doing much of anything. David passed the lit pipe. "Change is good as long as it doesn't change the things you love."

"If things don't change, then I feel like I'm aging with the world." A puff of weed helped color the sunset.

"A slow pace makes time stand still." David had been a top headhunter in Boston. Work had been an 8 to 6 race. He loved his new life.

"In this light you look 30."

I had taken off my glasses. Myopia was a great fountain of youth.

"That's what I like to hear from my guests." David took off his shirt. The sun had tanned him to golden brown hue. My sister admired his physique. He was in better shape than me.

"My pleasure. Only one thing I miss."

"Your kids." My sister knew the way I thought.

Angie and Fenway are on the other side of the world. Talking on the telephone brings us closer. I would prefer to hold my son and daughter in my arms. She's 8 and he's almost 4. I had spoken to both this morning on Skype.

"I'll be there soon enough." I had a flight to Thailand in mid-June. I was staying two months, but today's happiness index suffered from their absence and I went to sleep a little sad.

The next morning rain splashed on the lake. New York exerted a tug and I checked the schedule of the train from Portland to Boston.

"You're leaving?"

"I got to get ready for my trip."

"How you getting to Portland?" The station lay below western promenade.

"If necessary I'll hitchhike." Yesterday's plan was for a tomorrow departure. The weather dictated a change.

"No one hitchhikes anymore." My brother-in-law wanted me to stay. We enjoy each other's company,

"Only crazy men." I had seen the ghostly wraiths of rags on highways. No destination in mind.

"It's not the 70s." The Seventies were the decade of our 20s. "Hitchhiking is dead."

"I know." I had often hitchhiked across the USA, sometimes for pleasure and sometimes out of necessity. Pleasure and necessity had combined forces in August 1972. A fellow BC student Neil Nepola had been visiting his girlfriend, Vickie, in Tulsa. His BMW was to be our ride to California and I had thumbed through the Midwest spurred by the dreams of driving through the deserts in a fast car.

I arrived in Oklahoma to discover that we were on foot. Neil had rubber-necked a roller coaster in Oklahoma City. We were without a car.

Tulsa was half-way across the continent. We drank ourselves senseless in a few of Tulsa's BYOB bars before voting to keep on trucking. We were 20. We had long hair. We had read ON THE ROAD. The two of us bade good-bye to Tulsa, Vickie, and her younger sister. Funny I can remember Marilyn's name. She had green eyes.

We reached the coast at the end of Route 66 and stayed with Neil’s cousin in Seal Beach. We smoked pot, bodysurfed, and drank at a bar next to the Long Beach Channel. A week flashed fast in a paralytic ganga haze. His cousin’s name is lost in that miasma.

Two weeks remained until the resumption of BC’s fall semester. I wanted to see my friend, Wayne Shephard in Pomona. It was far from the coast. He was living with his biker brother. They took us to DisneyWorld. We smoke weed in IT’S A SMALL WORLD. I couldn't have been happier, then again Disneyworld prides itself on being the “the happiest place on earth.”

This distinction has changed locations for me many times since 1972.

Goa, Koh Phi Phi, Bali, Palm Beach, Paris, Bar Harbor.

Sri racha with Mam and Fenway.

But all places become common the first day you buy a roll of toilet paper, because the daily grind wears down the degree of happiness and you ask yourself, “Who is really happy?"

Several studies have named the Danes as the happiest people in the world. They're family people. They like nothing more than a hoogy or get-together. Danes ride bikes. They have no basketball superstars. The USA is 15th in the rankings.

The main source of happiness comes from a feeling of belonging and in western society cars separate us from those we love. Marshall McLuhan says the only time western man is truly alone is when he’s in his car. Cell phones are supposed to bring us closer, except no one answers them. Every man is not so much an island as a desert of feeling.

Drive in the suburbs.

The landscape of emptiness.

Not a restaurant open.

Not a bar where ‘everyone knows your name’.

Only the mall where you’re forced to consume everything you don’t really need.

Friends, family, the pursuit of happiness, which is why I love Thailand.

Not for the sex.

Not for the weather.

But for the warmth of drinking, eating, and talking with your friends and Thais only score 43rd on the list.

Both Thailand and the USA could do better.

Be happy. Mi sabaii.

The other choices are too gray to consider as viable alternatives.

Happiness is more than a warm blanket – Snoopy

As Victor Borge said, "To measure your happiness feel your heart."

We all know where it is.