My first Saturday night in New York, I had the opportunity to drive into the city for a meeting. Afterwards I wandered through my old neighborhood in the East Village, which has transformed considerably. One of the most striking changes is the profusion of restaurants which spill out onto the sidewalks as European-style cafes. (It’s amazing how wide New York sidewalks are.) It is much like the Upper West side used to be when I lived there 20 years ago.
So I chose an Italian bistro, and ate a delightful outdoor dinner while I surveyed the theater of New York Pedestriana on a Saturday. I admit to wishing I could have ordered a glass or two of wine, at the same time I had to admit that had it been 20 years ago (I drank much more heavily before I started into the meth—one addiction largely supplanted the other) I would have not likely had just two glasses of wine. Or had I, it would have been preceded and followed by several screwdrivers. The liquor would have started out by enhancing my dining experience, but ended up obscuring it. Not unlike filling in a coloring book until the pages were mostly indistinct black and blue blobs.
And if I was eating alone on a Saturday night, it would probably have been because I had been stood up or unable to find a friend to eat with, and I would have probably been angry or morose at my solitude. Or had my nose in a book on whose pages I would have found difficult to concentrate.
Instead, I thoroughly savored each course, patient at the time between them, and enjoyed immensely simply watching the cacophony of mini-dramas unfolding in front and around me. It occurred to me that whether I was drinking or not, the food and the street theater would have been exactly the same. What made the experience a quiet celebration or a wallow in self-pity was entirely dependent on my attitude.
Every since then I have been acutely aware of something I have always known intellectually, but rarely apprehended on a more fundamental level. That we are much less products of our experience, than our experience is a product of us. While certainly it is facile to suggest that we can simply decide on a daily basis to enjoy every experience of our life to the fullest, it is certainly true that we are capable of finding great joy in doing all of things we often trudge through, whether it be work, driving, eating, watching TV, spending time with our kids, ad infinitum.
I remember at Delano, in fact, getting a pass to go on some minor errand right around dusk, and it was a beautiful evening. For 10 precious minutes or so, I was as close to alone as one could get in prison, and it was a little piece of heaven. To boot there were birds nesting in the roof of the fenced catwalk, and I actually saw some fledglings attempting to take flight under their mothers’ watchful eye. I vowed never to take for granted again the precious joy that could be derived from something no more remarkable than a short walk outside. Of course I have failed at fulfilling this goal, but I am a hell of a lot better at slapping myself into awareness rather more often than in the past, consciously shaking myself out of whatever preoccupation is clouding my mind.
If we are lucky enough not to suffer from the effects of war, poverty, hunger or ill health, we are truly capable of putting some gratitude in our attitude at any moment, and making our experience as rich as it can be, rather than waiting for our experience to make us happy. We don’t need to wait for that vacation, that date or that drink to feel that all is right with the world and we are exactly where we should be.
Being so all the time would constitute Nirvana, and I doubt I’ll ever get there. But getting there isn’t really the point, is it? Being here is.
MCO 2005
