Making It Through
Does busyness account for happiness and fulfillment? Each morning, I lie in bed and hear birds chirping in the trees beside my building. Washing my few dishes by hand, I look out the kitchen window at the wooded slope across from the parking lot. Regularly, I enjoy a special treat. The doe and the fawns I can watch that my granddaughter has named Cinnamon, Dolly, Bambi, and Pepper. They often graze unconcerned when a car pulls out or into the parking lot.
I research the deer family and discover that they would appreciate a replenishment of sodium. Not readily available in the wintertime, salt is actually needed for deer anytime. I put on my grippy hiking boots and grasp my walking sticks to scale a steep slope, a muddy incline, and to avoid tumbling into brambles. Ascent would not be feasible otherwise. Without poles, I would lose my balance. I need a steady grip as I stumble over the wet autumn leaves camouflaging the mushy terrain underneath.
My backpack is weighted down with three boxes of coarse rock salt. My blue jeans snare on the gangly outshoots where thorns invade passage. I fill the plastic restaurant take-out trays with salt. To secure them to leveled tree stumps, I once nailed them there.
On a regular basis, I ascend the slope to refill the containers. By sprinkling water from a plastic bottle to dissolve some of the salt, I mimic a store-bought salt lick. Then, I make my way back down the steep and treacherous incline. I am committed to my ascent to fulfill my own self-imposed assignment, but always with joy and a sense of completion.
After a shower and dinner, I enjoy the evening’s entertainment on television. Or, I mull deeper thoughts that end up in my nightly journal of tasks completed, others planned for tomorrow, and reflections on the meaning of it all. To what purpose? Is there something special, non-trivial that I should intend to accomplish?
In a stretch of the imagination, I am like Sisyphus, the Greek god who endured the endless repetition of a futile task. He feared death but succeeded in dodging it through guile and trickery. For that, he was forced to push a massive boulder up a steep slope only to have it roll back on him before he could reach the illusive, unreachable mountain top.
Is anything to be gained in doing something as mundane and monotonous? The philosopher Camus believed that Sisyphus was actually happy because he had something to keep himself busy. Could there be some value and meaning in such drudgery?
In my case, I feel I cheat death twice a day. I awake and gratefully bask in the morning sun, a new version of myself. Later, I cheat death again by joyously recording in my evening diary the conquest of survival, renewal and some undefined and muted headway.
For me, however undeserving, I have acknowledged and redeemed myself from the fallout of my three divorces. In a scaled-back life style, I compose letters and stories for an older brother in hospice, and assist the elderly as a part-time associate in a hardware store. I share the study of language at a community college, cultivating an appreciation for the little things that matter.
I am conscious of my daily existential circumstance. Mindfully, I make my bed, prepare oatmeal, fold laundry, retrieve the mail and pay bills. I am sustained by my buddies with whom I play basketball. And I revel in the knowledge that I helped nourish and guide my children who are now grown.
Like Camus, I believe that the fearless struggle towards the mountain heights is enough to fill a person’s heart. Fulfillment and happiness have no need for something else, something more or better than what is happening right now.
© Charles J. Fortin
Charles J. Fortin was in the Peace Corps, and worked at the Inter-American Development Bank. His work is published in the Eckerd College Literary Journal, and A Revista Ciência & Trópico (Brazil). The author of The Politics of Squatter Settlement (Sussex Academic Press), he is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, earned a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a doctorate at the University of Sussex. He teaches at the Community College of Baltimore County.
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