Happiness


Dear Eugene,

It's almost the end of a day, my day, I am working towards it, and here I am writing again, writing differently than how I'd write during daytime, stealing moments then as I am borrowing from the energy of tomorrow now, a different sort of overcoming, a different way to let go of words.

If there is a battery level indicator on my forehead you would have seen it dropped from green to red just now just for my spitting out the last sentence.  I am not seeking to live an easy life.

There is a lady I know from volunteering with only two fingers on one of her hands, neither a thumb to make the matter worse.  Her life obviously isn't easy and it seems she isn't wanting one either. 

I've met her in more than one volunteer posts, all of long term commitment.

More than once I saw her holding a coffee cup in that hand, with two fingers, neither a thumb, in a way asking neither for anyone's gazing upon nor looking away.  They are just fingers, holding a cup, she seemed to say.  There needed not be any special attention or acceptance.

 I am not responsible for your happiness and neither are you mine.

One time a trainer gave the circle of volunteers a stack of paper to pass around, each one of us taking three sheet or more.  A friendly young man sitting beside this lady took his three and shoved the rest into her two-fingered hand.  He was eager to read the papers in his ten fingers, a benign negligence true enough, the kind of inattention the lady would not only welcome but encourage.  The stack dropped, scattered.

 Look what I've done, she said.

The young man didn't hear her.  The scattering wasn't spectacular.  She bent down to gather.  I sat behind her and didn't move a bit.  The word sympathy did not appear.  Neither did dignity.

It was happiness.

Yours, Alex

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