Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Happiness Is An Acquired Taste
31-DEC-2008:
It is a curious thing but as one travels the world getting older and older, it appears that happiness is easier to get used to than despair. The second time you have a rootbeer float for instance, your happiness at sipping the delicious concoction may not be quite as enormous as when you first had a rootbeer float, and the 12th time, your happiness may be still less enormous until rootbeer float begins to offer you very little happiness at all, because you have become used to the taste of vanilla ice-cream and rootbeer mixed together.
However, the second time you find a thumb tack in your rootbeer float, your despair is much greater than the first time when you dismissed the thumb tack as a freak accident rather than part of the scheme of the "soda jerk" (a phrase here which means ice-cream shop employee who is trying to injure your tongue), and by the 12th time you find a thumb tack, your despair is even greater still until you can hardly utter the phrase "rootbeer float" without bursting into tears.
It is almost as if happiness is an acquired taste, like coconut cordial or cerviche, to which you can eventually become accustomed, but despair is something surprising each time you encounter it.
