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Thursday, March 19, 1998

Don't trade today's joy for tomorrow's stress

HAPPINES: We could all learn to enjoy a bit more chaos, a bit less structure

Tuesday morning, 6:33 a.m. Static, static ... "amor, amor, amor"... Ahh, my radio had come on, signalling that another day had begun. I stumbled from bed, pawed in the direction of the sound to shut it off, and dragged down the hall to the showers. I was out of T-shirts, my shoes were still wet from the rain, and breakfast ... Man, don't get me started on that nasty orange juice. I managed to lug myself to Spanish class, where I was presented with my most recent quiz, which had earned a C-. Yes, this was going to be one of those days.

Know what the funny thing is? It wasn't. I went outside, with the weight of the impending failure in Spanish and a six-page paper due at 4 p.m. hovering over me. Once I saw the sunlight, though, all that evaporated in a little puff. You know those days after it's just rained - the sky is clear for miles, with no hint of clouds, smog, or anything nasty in the air? Somehow, seeing that sublime blue blanketing the skies, I couldn't worry about my grades, that paper I hadn't finished or the outstanding bill I had on my desk, demanding that I finally pay for those Barry White CDs I ordered way back in November.

This might seem like a pretty trivial thing. A sunny day in Southern California? Big deal. I would argue, however, that it is indeed a big deal. I look all around this gigantic campus and see people wound far too tightly - people who are so caught up in who they're going to be that they forget who they are.

The college years are critically important, no doubt. I realize that the degree you get and the people you meet are going to have an impact on you for the rest of your life. I'm well aware of the fact that classes are important. I also know, though, that all these things shouldn't prevent you from enjoying your life now.

We all want the American dream. Nice house, nice family, nice job, cool car. For some of us, the particulars are a bit different. Maybe your house is a beach-front mansion, maybe it's a teepee. Perhaps your car is a Lincoln, or perhaps it's a '73 Volkswagen Bus with no back window. My point is that we all want to feel like we've led successful lives when we look back at them.

I remember back in high school, right after school had let out for the summer, that I was sitting around, playing Spades with some friends. We were having a lazy, drawn-out conversation about life, and eventually the subject of the future came up. One of those "what do you want to be when you grow up?" deals. People spouted off various things like computer engineer, actor, journalist and whatnot. There was one girl left. I asked her what she wanted to do with her future as she trumped my sure winner with a spade.

"I want to be happy."

That's all she said, and game-play continued as my partner and I were systematically destroyed. At first, I thought that she'd given a really stupid, generic answer, but the more I thought about it, she'd said one of the wisest and most clever things I've ever heard.

She wasn't interested in whether she was a CEO or a taxi driver. She didn't care about where she would live, who she'd marry, what the future held for her or anything stupid like that. The important thing was the feeling she got, not how she got it. That moment, though nearly two years ago, still stands out, crystal clear in my mind.

I've always had my particular little ideas about what I'd like to do what my life, but now I see that if they don't work out exactly as I'd planned, that it isn't the end of the world. I'm not saying that I want to end up as a skid-row drunk, trying to scrounge up quarters to buy another bottle of Wild Turkey, but rather that the road to happiness doesn't necessarily have to be set and defined by the age of 18.

There's nothing wrong with having goals. I think it's a good idea to have a plan for what you want to do. When that plan consumes you, and you forget how to enjoy life, there's a problem. You know the people who do this, the ones with those gigantic bags under their eyes in the middle of the week, whose hands twitch when they don't have a pen in their hands and who freak out if they get "only" an A- on a quiz worth 2 percent of their grade. These people are slowly killing themselves for the sake of the future.

I don't think that the solution is to say, "Forget this med-school junk, I'm going to go sleep on the beach and eat at McDonald's forever." I think that the solution is to learn to balance the enjoyment that the future will hopefully render with the pleasures of today. Where does that spring from?

I think that the answer does not lie in the graduate school you might attend or the job you might get. Learning to enjoy the simple pleasures in life is a cheap, easy way to have a good time. Some of you are probably saying, "That's it? I could have figured that out on my own, genius!" Those of you who have already dawned on that, good job, you're wiser than you might think. A lot of people can't seem to appreciate things like that, though.

I don't mean this to seem like some corny "you've gotta accentuate the positive" inspirational message. I did think of an analogy for this, however. Bear with me, I'm an English major - getting to the point is something alien to me. Most of us like music, so imagine your life being like a concert. Some people want their life to be a classical recital, with 47 violinists, the finest horn players in the world and enough woodwinds to fill Carnegie Hall. They're playing the music of the greats, exactly like Bach, Beethoven and all those other cats wanted it done. Now that's cool, don't get me wrong. If you have full company like that, all playing in unison perfectly, you can make some beautiful music.

In this little life analogy, the antithesis of that symphony would probably be a rock band. Three musicians, playing songs with four chords, singing about how their baby did them wrong. Once in a while, they'll completely leave the format and improvise, ignoring what the song-writer intended. This is basic, straightforward stuff, uncomplicated and simple. Lots of people would sneer at this kind of music as being uncreative and formulaic.

There's nothing wrong with a symphony, but it's a lot easier to get pleasing music out of a rock band. For a symphony to work well, all the players need to interact perfectly, hitting each note with exact timing. And they need flawless memory for what they're going to play next. If one screws up, then everything falls apart because their mistake distracts the others, catches the audience's attention. and then the song is a wreck. They had the potential for greatness but a simple little mistake threw a wrench in all the plans.

In a rock band, it's just a couple of people goofing around, doing things that are catchy and easy to remember. When they go off on their improvisations, they're taking the song and making it their own in a way. It might not be exactly what the song was originally like, but it makes it different and interesting. They might make a mistake here and there, but the song isn't too complex, so they can recover.

If you let your life be a rock band, you'll be happier, I guarantee it. You will find your happiness in simplicity and you can enjoy life for what it is. By using those little improvisations, you can get out of the rules and formulas that hold you back from happiness. Next time when it's a nice day, go for a walk, read a good book, grab a bite to eat with your friends. Don't cash it in and flunk out, but take some time to enjoy the simple stuff.

Wow, a whole column on enjoying simplicity. It might be uncultured, it might be unrefined, but I don't particularly care. For those of you who want to listen to the symphony, go for it. If it doesn't work out, though don't forget rock music, greasy hamburgers and a smog-free L.A. day out there too.