And Then it Snowed

Warning! This entry contains references to a smiling baby.

People to Avoid This Week: All those morons who say these heavy snowfalls prove that there is no such thing as Global Warming.

The Cheerful Heart is not a think-yourself-happy blog. It is a place for exploring strategies to simply not be angry. I am suggesting that if we are not angry, we will be cheerful. Maybe not actively happy, certainly not happy all the time. But cheerful is a pretty good place to start, to be, whenever possible.

It was a few hours before the oncoming Big Snowstorm and I was headed into the 12 Items or Fewer line at the grocery store when a young lady pushing a cart with a baby and at least 40 items rushed in line in front of me. She was chatting on a cell phone. She moved around to the front of the cart and began piling her items onto the belt. The checker said not a word about the number of items, they never do. Nor did anyone in the long line behind me (all of whom had fewer than 12 items). Over the years I have learned not to express my righteous indignation. It never helps when I do and aften gets me into trouble.

The cashier finished ringing up the items. The woman took out her money. She had what looked like to me, around 30 dollars. The checker began subtracting items, slowly, one by one, discussing the merit and worth of each item as they went. I was not happy.

The strategy of this blog is to avoid anger-producing situations, but there was no getting out of this one. I decided to look at the baby, rather than cast furious glares at the woman. The baby and I stared at each other.

He smiled.

No, the clouds did not part, there was no shaft of brilliant sunshine. The birds did not begin to sing. I was still angry at the woman who put herself above everyone else and still didn't have the brains to check her money beforehand and keep a running tally in her mind as she shopped. But I smiled back and had a thought.

The baby had no particular reason to smile at me except, perhaps, because he naturally had a cheerful heart. Sure, it's not a bed of roses being a baby, you depend on others for food and keeping you clean, you have to cry to get anyone's attention, there are few things you can do to amuse yourself, but maybe you are so un advanced that you're just naturally happy. That the default setting for our hearts, as a species, is Cheerful. Rather than Angry, or Suspicious.

Perhaps there is an evolutionary reason that simple cheerfulness is a good strategy to enhance and propagate the species. I'm sure that 50,000 years ago early man had plenty to be afraid of, that fear was a natural response to a difficult environment, but I wonder, if there were moments when the tribe sat around the fire, they've had enough food, nothing was actively trying to eat them and they just felt good about things? I'm betting yes. I enjoyed this mental image.

The woman paid her bill, and pushed her cart out the door. I bought my items, went to the liquor store for a bottle of Gin, the Drink of the Cheerful Heart. As I was climbing into my car, I noticed the woman pulling out of her parking space. She had abandoned her cart in the middle of the street, not even pushing it to the side out of the way of traffic. I got out and moved the cart to the cart corral. I didn't do it for the woman, she still pissed me off. I didn't really do it for the people who were having to dodge the cart in their cars. I didn't even do it because I'm basically a nice person who goes around doing good deeds. I did it for the kid. And the smile that made me think of other things for at least a few minutes. And while I was distracted, my heart forgot about the selfish woman and clicked onto its default setting: Cheerful. And I thought about that stone age tribe, sitting around, doing whatever the hell they did when they were happy.

I went home, it snowed, a lot, I had a drink and it was a good evening.