One Skill Undermines Your Quest for Happiness

February 12, 2010

This is my son, Hunter, sitting on a boulder in the middle of a river, in my sister’s backyard in Costa Rica. I remember seeing him that day, thinking he looked sad, lonely, and bored. I had all but convinced myself that we should have waited to take our trip when his cousins were on vacation, so he’d have someone to play with.

I basically scolded myself and felt badly that, in my rush to get down there, I’d completely neglected his needs, and planned a trip that wasn’t going well for him at all.

Bad mommy.

Selfish mommy.

I could’ve done better.

But when I went over and asked him if he was bored or sad, he assured me he wasn’t at all. In fact, he was simply observing a line of ants, trying to get across a puddle, and he was trying to figure out how to build an ant bridge!

He was the opposite of bored; he was intrigued… fascinated… entertained… fully engaged in observing nature. That whole miserable scenario I was convinced of minutes before was entirely in my head. I noticed a few “clues” and filled in the blanks myself, creating an unhappy, fictitious narrative.

Why?

Recently, this sort of thing happened again. Hunter read The Little Prince on his own (we had read it together a few years ago). I asked him if he was sad about the end, when the snake killed the prince.

He thought I was kidding, and said, “Mommy! The snake didn’t kill the prince!”

I thought he wasn’t paying attention to what he was reading, but he WAS; it’s just that I know how to read between the lines. So I got the book to show him the sad scene, and highlighted the important clues:

*

Then I looked down toward the foot of the wall, and gave a great start! There, coiled in front of the little prince, was one of those yellow snakes that can kill you in thirty seconds. As I dug into my pocket for my revolver, I stepped back, but at the noise I made, the snake flowed over the sand like a trickling fountain, and without even hurrying, slipped away between the stones with a faint metallic sound.

I reached the wall just in time to catch my little prince in my arms, his face white as snow.

“What’s going on here? You’re talking to snakes now?”

I had loosened the yellow scarf he always wore. I had moistened his temples and made him drink some water. And now I didn’t dare ask him anything more. He gazed at me with a serious expression and put his arms around my neck. I felt his heart beating like a dying bird’s, when it’s been shot. He said to me:

“I’m glad you found what was the matter with your engine. Now you’ll be able to fly again…”

“How did you know?” I was just coming to tell him that I had been successful beyond all hope!

He didn’t answer my question; all he said was, “I’m leaving today, too.” And then, sadly, “It’s much further… It’s much more difficult.”

I realized that something extraordinary was happening. I was holding him in my arms like a little child, yet it seemed to me that he was dropping headlong into an abyss, and I could do nothing to hold him back.

His expression was very serious now, lost and remote. “I have your sheep. And I have the crate for it. And the muzzle…” And he smiled sadly.

I waited a long time. I could feel he was reviving a little. “Little fellow, you were frightened…” Of course he was frightened!

But he laughed a little. “I’ll be much more frightened tonight…”

Once again I felt chilled by the sense of something irreparable. And I realized I couldn’t bear the thought of never hearing that laugh again. For me it was like a spring of fresh water in the desert.

*

Every time I read this part, I cry like a baby. Or rather, I cry like a grown woman, who has lost loved ones and knows all too well how frail life can be.

I wish I could read it as he does, with no awareness of what is really happening… just enjoying the events of the story: prince talks to dangerous snake, snake goes away, prince and his friend are saying a sad farewell because the prince is going back to his planet, where he will be reunited with his rose (and live happily ever after).

THAT is how a child reads, taking everything at face value… not looking for innuendo, back story, sarcasm, irony, or making assumptions about anything. They read the words as they are written. Nowhere does it SAY, “the snake killed the prince.”

As grownups, we have learned the skill of INFERENCE.

According to Wikipedia, “inference is the process of drawing a conclusion by applying clues (of logic, statistics etc.) to observations or hypothesis; or by interpolating the next logical step in an intuited pattern.”

This is how we read between the lines. We see one thing written, but we INFER another. The mark of a true intellectual, right?

In fact, we do this in conversation, too. Someone tells us one thing, but we assume they mean another. We often suffer and agonize about what someone else “probably MEANT”, regardless of what they actually said, or did.

She gets upset if her guy wants to spend his weekends playing golf, or climbing mountains, because it CLEARLY means, he doesn’t love her! He gets frustrated when he asks her what’s wrong, and she says, “Nothing,” because OBVIOUSLY something is wrong… she has that pensive, sad, lonely, bored look (like Hunter had, on the river). We have mastered the skill of INFERENCE so that we can fill in the blanks in these, and other, complex situations.

We consider kids to be so simple and innocent because they are ignorant of the REAL, underlying meaning of things.

But are they?

What IS the “real” meaning of anything? How do we know what is “really” happening?

Maybe we (grownups) are over-complicating things by looking for hidden meaning in events that just ARE.

Maybe we could learn to simply enjoy our life story as a kid would, without looking for sinister sub-plots, or tragic endings. Perhaps this inference skill we worked so hard to master is actually undermining our ability to appreciate the happiness that is already present in our lives.

Without inference, the little prince (and you) could live happily ever after.

What do you think?

Do you read your life story AS IT IS WRITTEN? Or, do you fill in the blanks to your own detriment? Are you in the habit of automatically assuming the worst? Do you accept the words and actions of others at face value?

Thanks!!!

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Posted in choices, happiness, inner peace, Life, serenity, simplicity