Pretty Things

“Billy stayed in the wagon when it reached the slaughterhouse, sunning himself.  The others went looking for souvenirs.  Later on in life, the Tralfamadorians would advise Billy to concentrate on the happy moments of his life, and to ignore the unhappy ones —to stare only at pretty things as eternity failed to go by.  If this sort of selectivity had been possible for Billy, he might have chosen as his happiest moment his sun-drenched snooze in the back of the wagon.”     

Slaughterhouse-Five

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Reading this paragraph in Vonnegut’s novel triggered thoughts of what such a moment might be for me in my past.  The image that came to mind was a brief moment in my undergraduate days at Indiana Wesleyan in either 1989 or 1990 before I’d dropped out to join the Army.

I was walking on a sidewalk heading East towards our campus dining facility on an exceedingly pleasant and sunny day.  I passed under the shade of a large tree that is not there anymore and when I reemerged into the sun it triggered an intense feeling that Vonnegut would famously describe as “Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt” in an epitaph.

It was startling, really.  I had had so many misadventures and misfirings up to that point post-high school, feeling  listless and directionless, until that very moment when everything seemed right with the universe.  I became emotional and felt tears starting to well up in my eyes.

It was pure delusion of course.  Most likely a dopamine dump  that had flooded my synapses, but a moment nonetheless that gives one hope to keep going and see what’s around the next bend.  Maybe it’s an unforeseen blessing or maybe it’s more misery.  The important thing is that there are possibilities (forget probabilities) and opportunities that float there in the not-yet.

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