Getting Schooled

The principles of good cheer

Wednesday, February 7, 2024

Putting the house to order before work, I pick up the packaging tape dispenser left on the dining room table and notice the tape has slipped out from the slot it threads through. Oh yeah. That’s why I didn’t put it away. It happens all the time and frustrates the dickens out of me. My method for managing the situation is to fumble with it for a few seconds and then call out to my partner Gary to come and fix it. I catch him just as he’s heading out. This time, however, he’s not going to totally let me off the hook. I can see a teachable moment gearing up as he goes into demonstration mode.

“You do understand the principle, right? The tape goes under here,” he explains, pointing to what now appears to be the obvious and only place for a ribbon of tape to slide through. How do I keep missing that?

“When you apply pressure here,” he continues, pointing to the long plastic lip which has always looked pointless to me, “the blade comes forward to cut the tape.” He demonstrates and, sure enough, the blade’s teeth jut out.

“Got it,” I say, not wanting to encourage more conversation. I have no patience for mundane details taking my time whereas Gary has so very much, probably because he’s interested in understanding the principles of things in general, whether they be big or small. In that way and so many others, he lives a very principled life.

To pay him back for my humbling instruction, I playfully mock him a little as I walk him out the door.
“’You do understand the principle of tape dispensary, right?’” I say, throwing his words back at him.

He laughs, calling over his shoulder, “You do understand the second law of thermodynamics, right?”

While I don’t care a hoot about tape dispensers, what lingers after Gary leaves is the how this is the second time the issue of principles has come up for me, all within the first waking hour of the day. Earlier that morning while unloading the dishwasher, I’d been trying to work out in my mind how to become a more cheer-forward person. Mysteriously, I’d woken up with an unexpected resolve to be more cheerful. I don’t know where this came from. All I know is I’d woken up understanding the fruitlessness of discontent, full stop. In one fell swoop I could now see that when unfavorable circumstances befall me, how much sense does it make to also hand over my happiness, too? It’s like saying, “There, take it all; if I’m going to be wounded, I prefer to be deeply wounded.”  

The problem is, this newfound awakening puts me in a bind. I’m a believer in feeling your feelings and a striver of authenticity so any kind of shortcut to cheerfulness or the pretense of it wouldn’t cut it with me. But this message was delivered so purposefully it left no doubt as to what I would do: go figure out the principles of being a more cheer-forward person. After several weeks I was able to determine two principles, using the tape dispenser as my guide:

• Principle #1  Like understanding how to feed the tape through the right slot, I know good cheer requires getting over what life should be and getting on with all that it is.
• Principle #2  Like applying pressure to the plastic shield brings forward the goods (the blade in the case of packaging tape dispensers), some of us might need a touchpoint reminder to return to good cheer time and time again throughout the day.

Principle #2 takes on special importance because it’s so easy to have a baseline of neutrality, a baseline of nothingness in other words. And because I slip out of real time so easily, moving faster than good cheer can keep up, I decided my touchpoint would be to literally touch whatever is right in front of me. Laying my hands on the table or this mug of coffee or whatever is directly in my path can, if I let it, have the effect of bringing me back into the here & now and the awe that we are real and here at all on this ride. I can let that touchpoint ground me and give my intention of good cheer a chance to catch up. It’s slow going but maybe going slow is part of the learning’s intention.

Why this overnight message of good cheer came for me has been a curiosity but perhaps it’s because this is a particularly perilous time in my life right now with a handful of deeply saddening situations clustering together as sad things sometimes do.  Perhaps this message waited for a time when I would be most able to understand the deep imperative for good cheer and then attempt, as I do, to spread the word.

Cheers to good schooling,

E
 
 
A note on the imperative of right timing
I know there are seasons of our lives that are low or even quite seriously impaired and that space needs to be made for proper recovery without the pressure or responsibility of maintaining good cheer. I’ve had a seat at the table of clinical depression, so I get that. And I know there are tragic events that take all light away while we deal and process. What I’m talking about here, for myself anyway, are the ways I sometimes just don’t bother with good cheer or act as if a difficult situation must therefore equal a low mood like this is an unbreakable law of logic when, in fact, the message being delivered to me and which I’m fumbling around trying to transcribe for others is that good cheer is an orientation, a baseline to return throughout the day, through our good times and bad, after the immediate processing has happened.