Accept the universe that lies in front of you

This was not much of a summer. There were only a few hints of the vaunted Okanagan heat, and never for more than a day or two at a time. We muted the air conditioner for much of the season, and we shut it off altogether in early August. Now, at the equinox, the heat has retreated to the south. The nights are cool, and a light shirt is no longer enough to protect against the early morning chill.

Heavy clouds occasionally obscure the mountaintops around the valley, though only once have they hung around all day. Still, even those brief reminders of the greyness of winter to come make me grateful for every hour of sunshine. The drab winter months will come soon enough.

We came west to dissolve the drabness and sameness of our Ottawa life. Now that we have completed almost one complete seasonal cycle here, we can see hints of some new habits of life that in themselves could become patterns of drabness and sameness.

Changing location does not change personality. You are what you are, and you take yourself wherever you go. The geographical cure does not solve relationship problems, job problems, or inertia problems. This is not unique to us, and it is certainly not a modern phenomenon. Plato wrote that Socrates was once asked why a certain man was still crabby after coming back from a pleasure trip, and he given a simple explanation: the man had had to travel with himself.

It seems all too human to complain. Some people are lucky enough never to wonder “Why me?” and others are wise enough to outgrow the question, realizing that stuff happens to everybody — including things that from their personal perspective appear to be bad and good. Still, it takes an effort to accept every quirk of the universe with equanimity. This acceptance might take the form of religious surrender, or it could be some other form of psychological self-defense. Herman Melville, for example, buried this reflection deep in the pages of Moby-Dick:

There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own. However, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He bolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all hard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich of potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints.

That view gives a reason anyway, even if it paints a harsh picture of human life, as full of “hard things visible and invisible.”

There is another familiar fallacy that some people harbor to distance themselves from a reality that might take courage to face. It begins with the words “If only.” Things could be so much better if only they had more money, more friends, a better job, less snow to shovel in the winter. The implication is that life could be perfect if conditions were just a little more favorable.

If you are going to be happy in paradise, it will not be because you are in paradise but because you are you. And if a new place will make you a different person, it will not be because of the place but because you are determined to change. Happiness is a choice, not the result of circumstances.

All things considered, I have been blessed with one of the best lives of all time, and it is not because of where I am or what I own or who I know. It is simply the result of my general attitude. I believe my life and situation would seem like a beautiful dream to most of the people on this planet — in fact, to most of the people who have ever lived.

And why would I ever want to be somebody else? Our image of other lives is never realistic. Many of the pleasant faces we encounter, either in person or in pictures, mask miserable interiors, anxieties, worries, troubles that nobody would choose to own. When I think of the beauty of music and wonder what it might be like for a professional musician to live inside that beauty, I normally consider only the esthetic pleasure of performance, the applause and acclaim of an audience, never the monotonous hours of rehearsal, the days away from home in strange hotels without the leisure to explore new cities.

If you envy somebody’s life, remember that from some limited perspective your own life could seem better than others as well, and that people might easily envy your life if they saw only the surface.

Our circumstances have been very different from what we pictured at the beginning of this summer. The plans Catherine and I brought to Kelowna have had to be shelved for now, and we have seen how quickly life can change, for better or worse. We have not been able to walk together for months. Friends tell us about their camping adventures, their days swimming or hiking, while we have been camping out in hospital waiting rooms.

Ralph Waldo Emerson saw discontent as the want of self-reliance. He called it infirmity of will. To cure it, he recommended focusing on the business of life.

So we deal with the life in front of us, grateful for the friends and the mountains and the skies, even for the clouds, and we recognize that circumstances only represent the hand we have been given. Whatever they are, however harsh they seem to be, we still have to play that hand. How we play it will determine whether life becomes a matter of joy or of regret.