Key to happiness may be found in Chuckles

Every parent in America has heard the complaint “Are we there yet?” coming from the backseat and voiced by a bored ten year old.

These complaints increase in frequency, the longer the road trip and the question is nothing to chuckle about. Actually, the question of “Are we there yet?” is asked by most adults entering midlife and beyond.

“When will I be happy?” “When will I be respected?” “When will I arrive at peace?”

For many athletes they ask me “When will I arrive at confdence?”

These rueful queries that adults pose to themselves are the questions that every religion, philosophy or great work of literature have been asking for ages. When do we fnally arrive at the place called happiness?

Here’s an example of a writer asking the question of where to fnd happiness.

“The Quest for the Holy Grail” written in the 12th Century by Chretien de Troyes is about Perceval, the young knight, who was in search of the Holy Grail in order to restore the sick king’s health, and happiness and make the felds fertile once again.

The Holy Grail is a mythological plate, goblet, chalice or stone which has been the subject of many a book and flm and it is said to provide eternal youth and happiness to the one who possesses it.

Some say America’s restless nature is its quest to fnd this Holy Grail. Since “All men are created equal” we constantly seek to establish our unknown status. To paraphrase an old commercial “We earn our identity in America the old fashioned way….we earn it.”

In America its work, work and then work some more. Our constitution guarantees “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Our founding fathers never bothered to say exactly what this mysterious thing called ‘happiness’ actually is so we all keep asking “Are we there yet?” This thing called happiness always seems to be just out of reach.

Perhaps the answer can be found in “The Quest for the Holy Grail.”

Perceval failed in his quest because he failed to ask any questions about the grail when he initially spotted it. We may all be like Perceval in that we don’t know what happiness looks like and don’t know how to talk about it when we see it.

The great writer, actor and mystic genius Spalding Gray was a friend of mine and his Holy Grail or his quest for happiness was fnding the ‘perfect moment’ when he went on vacation.

This quest almost ended his life when he was in Thailand flming “The Killing Fields.” He had a day of between scenes so he went to this perfect little beach he had heard about, smoked some weed, swam way out past the breakers and gloried at the sunset.

Then he realized that the tide was going out, the current was against him and he almost drowned trying to get back to shore. If one thinks that the Holy Grail is some form of perfection, the quest may kill you.

In Thornton Wilder’s play “Our Town” the last scene is of Emily, the young bride who died in childbirth. She was dead but still in limbo, prior to being shipped to heaven. She kept pleading with the people waiting with her to get one last chance to return to earth to see her family.

They all advised against it but fnally let her return to the day of her 12th birthday. She returns to earth as a ghost and observes the day. As she sees her harried parents running around busying themselves with chores and tasks of all kinds, she slowly realizes that her family cannot see or even experience the goodness of the life they live.

Just before she returns to limbo she says “Good-bye, Good-bye world, Goodbye Grover’s Corner, Mama and Papa. Goodbye to clocks ticking. Good-bye to Mama’s sunfowers and food and coffee. Good-bye to new ironed dresses and hot baths. And sleeping and walking. Oh world, you’re too wonderful for anyone to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? “The stage manager replies “No, the saints and the poets maybe, maybe they do some.”

Let’s go back to the beginning of my story with that 10-year-old kid whining “Are we there yet?” That’s actually a real story and that kid was me, sitting in the back seat of the family car in mid-June, with father and mother in the front seat driving up to Maine to spend the summer with my mom’s parents who owned a big farm in Farmington, Maine.

My sister and my brother and I were crammed into the back seat and during pauses between fghts with my brother I would shout out “Are we there yet?”

The trip from Bayside, Queens to Farmington, Maine took about 12 hours with fve states to traverse on this long, arduous sometimes torturous journey. We had to drive through 5 states and as we pulled out of Bayside my father gave us each one box of Chuckles and said, “Make them last. That’s all you get.”

I was already a natural at math so I calculated that we had fve states to transverse including New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine and only fve Chuckles including red, green, yellow, purple and black, that meant only one Chuckle per state. The way I managed this situation was to slowly suck on each Chuckle without chewing them.

So the moral of the story is to try to enjoy each and every Chuckle you get because you never know when you’ll run out and you never really know when you’ll fnally get to where you’re going. Enjoy the ride, enjoy the chuckle, enjoy your summer.