Please Notice When You Are Happy

I just finished reading Kurt Vonnegut's 'memoir' A Man Without a Country, in which the writer who swore never to write again, is moved by his, shall we say negative, feelings about the current state of affairs in his country, to again put pen to paper, or fingers to typewriter - but NOT to computer keyboard, never!! We can be glad that he did, because he gives us yet more wisdom by which to live our lives. He's just a Sci-Fi writer, isn't he??? Yeah right. And H5N1 is just flu.

Here's a quote, the most memorable I think, from the book:

"... I really don'’t know what I'’m going to become from now on. I'’m simply along for the ride to see what happens to this body and this brain of mine. I'’m startled that I became a writer. I don'’t think I can control my life or my writing. Every other writer I know feels he is steering himself, and I don'’t have that feeling. I don'’t have that sort of control. I'’m simply becoming. All I really wanted to do was give people the relief of laughing. Humor can be a relief, like an aspirin tablet. If a hundred years from now people are still laughing, I'’d certainly be pleased. I apologize to all of you who are the same age as my grandchildren. And many of you reading this are probably the same age as my grandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Boomer corporations and government. Yes, this planet is in a terrible mess. But it has always been a mess. There have never been any '“Good Old Days',” there have just been days. And as I say to my grandchildren, "“Don'’t look at me. I just got here."”

There are old poops who will say that you do not become a grown-up until you have somehow survived, as they have, some famous calamity:— the Great Depression, the Second World War, Vietnam, whatever. Storytellers are responsible for this destructive, not to say suicidal, myth. Again and again in stories, after some terrible mess, the character is able to say at last, "“Today I am a woman. Today I am a man. The end."” When I got home from the Second World War, my Uncle Dan clapped me on the back, and he said, "“You'’re a man now."” So I killed him. Not really, but I certainly felt like doing it. Dan, that was my bad uncle, who said a male can'’t be a man unless he'’d gone to war.

But I had a good uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father'’s kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they so seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, and talking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, "“If this isn'’t nice, I don'’t know what is."”

So I do the same now, and so do my kids and grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, "“If this isn'’t nice, I don'’t know what is."”"


Kurt himself mentions the above advice right at the end of this BBC Radio 4 interview for the front row program of February 6th this year, along with one readers fitting application of it...

I took, albeit with my always-ready cameraphone (ironically since I invested in a good camcorder), some nice footage of Ed yesterday (below), holding a "conversation" with me.
Joni really, well, "Mothers" him is the word, she loves him to bits - cuddles him so hard he nearly does end up in bits! She says "awwwwww!!" every time he does something cute (how could you ever program a computer to recognize a 'cute' look, sound or situation? How would you even begin to define cuteness? Yet Joni gets it spot on every time) - even though she's only 2 herself (3 in a fortnight). Bex had to take him for an injection yesterday, and she said that Joni cried as much as Ed did, in sympathy! Joni (yesterday again) said to Becky, who was struggling to get the pram into the house, "can you manage?" ;-) and, scarily, moved Becky's ironing, which she had put into little piles by the living room window, into one big pile hidden in the corner. She told Bex off "Mummy, you do it like this, tidy!" - the scary thing being, that's exactly what I'm like, always moving anything on the floor into a corner somewhere, out of sight (and mind)! She's my mini-me.