Reflections on a wet car seat

Walked into my office with a soggy butt, thinking long thoughts about contentment.

The clammy caboose came from leaving the pick-up window rolled down overnight in the rain. Don’t do that very often, so it came as a surprise – of course, my first impulse was to blame somebody else, but I couldn’t pull that off in any supportable way.

The thoughts on contentment sprang from my amazement that having a damp derriere did not immediately ruin my day, not even when the overly-aggressive office air conditioning hit it. Why, I wondered, am I in such a good mood when nothing good has happened to me yet? (I guess the question itself shows that behind the grumpy mask I sometimes wear there does indeed reside a grump.)

Next step in the chain of logic was to think that some people don’t need good things to happen to be happy. Most children, for example, are happy unless something happens to make them unhappy. A few lucky adults are also like that, but I don’t think I’m unusual because I’m wired the opposite way. I tend to cruise along in emotional Neutral until an external force shifts me into another gear. In fact, it’s probably true that what I often think of as happiness is simply the absence of any degree of sadness.

That said, my soaked seat could have shifted me into Grouchy, especially given the constructive commentary that came with it. Why didn’t it? A little introspection made me aware of a warm fuzzy feeling that I tentatively identified as contentment. Being the man I am, I immediately tried to banish it.

For one thing, as a highly trained (former) member of the greatest fighting force on earth, I have not normally held warm and fuzzy in high esteem. In a testosterone-driven community like the Army you may as well paint a bull’s-eye on your back.

And then there’s my knee-jerk avoidance of vulnerability. This is that stupid thing from the lizard part of my brain that thinks high expectations are the single best way to be disappointed. Better to anticipate badness, because then reality will probably look OK.

To cap it off, I was trained by Uncle Sam to plan for the thing that’s most likely to happen and also for the worst thing that could happen. “Most likely” doesn’t often mean “really good” and “worst” never does, so you can see what frame of mind that approach can leave me in.

But today, despite my best efforts, I feel undeniably content. Don’t want anything, what I already have is good. Small house? Easier to clean, and big enough for two. Small TV? Don’t watch it much anyway. Small pick-up? More garage space. Small paycheck? It’s enough, and it’s really not that small either. Today I like my job, like this town, like the people in it, like the world. I even like myself. What gives? Wait, just thought of something. Be right back.

Nope, that little two-minute first-response drug test says I’m clean. No extra seeds on the poppy-seed muffins. So . . .

Maybe it has to do with the realization, refreshed by recent events, that God wrote the end of my story before I started on the beginning. So I already know how this winds up: I win. Or more accurately, we win, all of us who are riding the omnipotent shoulders of the God who took on the Ultimate Badness a long time ago and won. In that context all the sturm und drang of this world is just . . . stuff. Maybe that’s what I’m feeling today.

Either way, I’m just going to go with it. Sure, maybe one of the darker bits of life really is going to jump out and whack me upside the head. So what? Might fix the crick in my neck.