Stories from a West Coast Town M.A.C. FARRANT
Very quietly, very slowly, happiness can take over a person’s life POSITIVE IMPACT On Saturday, July 9, 2016, Buddhist monks from the Great Enlightenment Buddhist Institute in Little Sands, Prince Edward Island, bought six hundred pounds of live lobsters from several establishments around the island and returned them to the ocean, thus saving the lobsters’ lives. It was, the monks said, an act of compassion. When she heard this, a woman from the West Coast was inspired to rescue the last Atlantic lobster from her town’s Save-On-Foods, where it had been languishing for several days at the bottom of a display tank. She’d noticed it while shopping and worried about its future. Now she had a plan. She purchased the lobster and carried it home in a pail half-filled with water from the tank. The next day she painting: judy maclaren
shipped the lobster via Purolator, and at a personal cost of $245, to her friend in Prince Edward Island with the instruction that, like the Buddhist’s lobsters, hers would be returned to the ocean. “It’s a spiritual thing,” she explained to the local TV station when the news broke. “Sometimes spirituality gets so structured it doesn’t even feel like you’re living.” It was a Purolator agent who tipped off the TV station. He told them the story “just translated” for him and that he found it “real and soulful.” “It’s an example of being a little better than you are,” he said. THE WEATHER CHANNEL “I won’t lie to you,” the woman was telling her daughter. “There have been train wrecks. I’ve lived in suspended
adolescence for much of my life. But then, when I turned sixty, things started to calm down and a low-grade happiness took over. I’m not sure why. Getting older maybe. Getting that big pay-out from your dad.” “Don’t talk about Dad,” said the daughter. They were having drinks in the Dockside Pub after the daughter’s shift at Starbucks. “Okay, but this is important,” her mother continued. “It’s something you need to know. Very quietly, very slowly, happiness can take over a person’s life. It’s happened to me. Not a big kind of happiness with streamers and balloons, more of a background happiness, like the music you hear on the Weather Channel. “Seriously,” said the daughter. “When I hear that music,” the mother said, “I think: This perfectly Notes & Dispatches 11
