Well, Isn't This Nice!

Read a book by Kurt Vonnegut a while back. It's called A Man Without a Country. Good book. In it he talks about an uncle of his sayin' a man wasn't a man unless he'd been to war. Then he joked about killin' his uncle right there on the spot. Vonnegut went to war. I figure he didn't like it very much. He was a POW for a while too. He'd seen all kinds of horrible things. Most of these horrible things are forced upon the world by men that think they can only be men by goin' to war.





In this book, Vonnegut also talks 'bout his "good uncle" (coincidentally named Alex). This uncle believed life was meant for sumthin' much greater than war and killin' and dyin'. He believed it was for drinkin' lemonade on hot summer days and tellin' stories and spendin' time with family and friends. He would do these things and say to himself or anyone listenin' "Well, isn't this nice!"





I dunno how to do that.





I should learn.





It's a good philosophy. Nobody really wants to kill. Nobody wants to die for any cause. Everybody just wants to be happy. Lotta people look for a big permanent happy. Unfortunately, as far as I can see, there's no such thing. There's moments of happiness. They come and go. Some are big, some are lil, some stay for just a second, others last for a long while. But you gotta grab hold of these happy moments when they come. Enjoy 'em to the fullest.





Soon enough they'll be gone and those bad times'll start rollin' in. There'll always be too many of those and odds are you're gonna feel 'em as much as possible. Everybody does.





I should take my own advice. I'm terrible at it though. I'm never happy 'cause I never appreciate those lil things. But the little are all that really matter. All the little children and the little flowers and the little stars in the night sky. That's what should be appreciated. Those are the things that'll make you happy. Those and all the dumb jokes you'll ever hear and all the times someone kisses you and a million other tiny things.



It's kinda like lookin into a night sky really. You look up and you see a lotta dark and its a lil scary and instinctively you know its incomplete. But when you can see all those little bright spots, little tiny specks scattered about like the happy lil moments in your life, you can look up and say, "Well, isn't this nice!"



Like they say, you gotta stop and smell the roses. Life ain't worth livin' unless you're actually livin' it. Gotta make time to smell the roses and taste your food and enjoy the air you breathe. If you ain't havin' any fun then how could you possibly be happy? Even when things get bad you gotta find it a lil amusin' when that Murphy's law starts comin' into play. You think things couldn't possibly get worse and then they always do. It's like a game the universe plays with you to see how much you can take. As long as you don't take life too seriously you'll come out alright.

If you really think about it there's not much in life that's really that serious. Work? I work at a clothing store where little old ladies come and buy ugly sweaters to ship off to ungrateful grandkids. I also work at my family's plumbin' company where earlier this week my 59 year old dad threatend to beat up a city official that's half his age (I have no doubt he could take 'im by the way). Money? We all waste it on a bunch of stupid crap we don't really need. $150 Ed hardy t-shirts, Snuggies, tooth paste dispensers, shoes you can't get wet, and taxes. It's all bullshit. Like we're lookin' for ways to waste our lives instead of just bein' happy with what we got.

All I need in this world is beer, good friends, good food, and some damn good music. I don't wear fancy clothes, I don't need a big house, I don't need a nice car. Sure those things might be nice to have but we don't need it. We've never needed it.

You know what a diamond is?

A shiny rock.

That's it and people die for 'em, people kill for 'em, people spend thousands of hours workin' and savin' to get one. It's a damned rock. That's it. Pretty it may be but not worth the trouble. Not to me.

My friends. My small comforts. My lil flashes of happiness are worth the time it takes to find and keep 'em. That's why I should appreciate 'em for what they are and not just overlook all those lil things.

I'm bout to head out for a walk and see if I can find a lil sumthin to give me reason to say, "Well, isn't this nice!"