While driving from Livermore, CA to Klamath Falls, OR today, I started musing about how great experiences like the ones I’ve enjoyed lately both humble you, putting you in your very small place in the scheme of things – and make you feel like the luckiest kid in the world. That train of thought instantly reminded me of something Kurt Vonnegut said in an interview with the Weekly Guardian (1991):
Q: What is your idea of perfect Happiness?
A: Imaging that something somewhere wants us to like it here.
And then also, later in the same interview:
Q: When and where were you happiest?
A: About ten years ago my Finnish publisher took me to a little inn on the edge of the permafrost in his country. We took a walk and found frozen ripe blueberries on bushes. We thawed them in our mouths. It was as though something somewhere wanted us to like it here.
I have definitely been feeling like something somewhere wants me to like it here lately!
That thought led me right to John Green’s angle in The Fault in Our Stars (the last book I read):
‘”I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased toward consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed.“‘
It pleases me to combine these thoughts and let a fair exchange start happening. Something somewhere wants me to like it here, while I am eager and willing to notice and observe the elegance of the universe!
Here are a few things from my last days in CA that I thought the universe was especially wanting me to notice:
I arrived in the state of OR this evening, although I won’t go to my final destination until Sunday. I have been in motion for nearly a month straight, and I find that I am very much looking forward to remaining in one area for awhile. I’ll be in OR for at least 3 months, then it remains to be seen what the universe has in mind for me to notice next!
