“And I urge you to please discover when you find yourself completely happy, and exclaim or murmur or assume in some unspecified time in the future, “If this is not good, I do not know what’s.” – Kurt Vonnegut
| Matt likes to photobomb my photographs. He is is the mad blur flying in from the correct. We had been watching the sundown from the Rims. 10/21/21 |
Matt and I exploit the “If-this-isn’t-nice” method fairly commonly in our lives. It has served us nicely for year and years. We borrowed it instantly from Kurt as he, in flip, had borrowed it from his Uncle Alex.
 |
| Household enjoyable after Shrek: The Musical (three of my cousins had been within the play) at my Aunt and Uncle’s home. We performed Spoons which was a completely superior blast from the previous. 11/7/21 |
I liked Kurt’s suggestion from the second it first crossed my path again in highschool. It dovetailed with my yoga teacher’s adage which got here alongside in faculty: “An perspective of gratitude brings you pleasure.” Each drove residence to me the significance of being current. Of being conscious of the small (and enormous) joys in my life and cultivating a grateful, open coronary heart. Collectively, they made me really feel like happiness was pretty straightforward for me to search out, as long as I used to be paying consideration.
 |
| A creamy curried soup with a number of fairly fixings made by our buddies Derek and Brittany. 12/5/21 |
“If this is not good, I do not know what’s,” whereas we hike on the Rims, as we eat a delicious homecooked meal, as we soak at a sizzling spring pool.
“If this is not good, I do not know what’s,” as we watch shiny, fluffy snowflakes tumbling down, as we paddle the kayak at Riverfront Park, whereas tending our backyard.
 |
| A cabin-in-the-mountains-with-a-hot-tub slumber social gathering with some very particular galpals. 11/14/21 |
“If this is not good, I do not know what’s,” whereas we benefit from the dawn/set, as we dance collectively, as we sit with cats on our laps and books in hand.
“If this is not good, I do not know what’s,” as we stomach giggle with buddies, when the air is full of that recent rain odor, once we’re camped out within the woods.
 |
| Johnny is an extreme licker–of herself and others. Ginger is completely happy to oblige. 11/9/21 |
As a result of happiness is the little stuff–a cozy cuppa on brisk day–and it’s the large stuff–the Grand Canyon at sundown. Consciousness is the important thing. These moments are throughout us, particularly the littler ones. I feel Uncle Alex was on to one thing. Happiness deserves acknowledgement at each alternative.
 |
| Strolling to the present with Val and the Matts at Hillberry. 10/10/21 |
Here is the complete passage from A Man With out A Nation:
“However I had a superb uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father’s child brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an sincere life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well-read and sensible. And his principal criticism about different human beings was that they so seldom seen it once they had been completely happy. So once we had been consuming lemonade below an apple tree in the summertime, say, and speaking lazily about this and that, virtually buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would all of the sudden interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, “If this isn’t good, I don’t know what’s.”
So I do the identical now, and so do my children and grandkids. And I urge you to please discover when you find yourself completely happy, and exclaim or murmur or assume in some unspecified time in the future, ‘If this isn’t good, I don’t know what’s.””
 |
| Our 2021 Christmas tree–the first time we went out and minimize one ourselves–and the winter wonderland past. 12/5/21 |
Kurt Vonnegut was a fairly formative affect in my teenagers and twenties. His compassion and humanism and humor blew me away, particularly given all he had been by way of within the conflict. He made me need to be a greater human. That is good writing, I say.
