“To see a world in a grain of sand
and heaven in a wildflower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
Eternity in an hour”
- William Blake

The differences between people are what makes the world interesting. Mostly, people are more alike than they are different. Have you ever watched people eating burritos at Chipotle? They could be from anywhere and they all look the same: hands firmly holding the ends of the burrito, necks stretched forward over the table so that any toppings fall on the wrapper below, because over half the folks pick up anything that falls and eat it too.

But every once in awhile you encounter people who look at the world a lot differently than you do, and you tend to remember it.

I’ll never forget a conversation I overheard in the ladies room one time when I was temping at that Job-in-a-Box – the one where I was doing that proof reading. And the proof reading was considered “exciting” there! Everything else was all filling out forms and filling in spread sheets and stuff like that. I suppose that’s interesting to some people, or they feel good organizing data, or something. If I had a job like that it’s very likely that I would throw the whole mess of work out the window right before jumping out myself.

Anyway, these two women were talking. They were administrative assistants – jobs that consisted of entering lots of numbers in lots of spread sheets and e-mailing them to lots of people. About every four days, they got a phone call. Usually, it was for someone else.

But, clearly, they were high school, maybe even college graduates. They were married, they had kids – I don’t know how old. They were very well dressed: either they made good money or their husbands did. What I’m getting at here is that they weren’t disadvantaged people. They had the same natural gifts as any average woman – in intellect, social skills, looks – and had the means to provide for themselves well.

This is how the conversation went:

AA1 (coming out of the stall, sighing deeply) “How are you?”
AA2 (washing her hands) “Well, you know. Last night.”
AA1 “Yeah, JAG wasn’t on. Can you believe it?”
AA2 “I know! And I didn’t know what to do!”
AA1 “What can you do? I just flipped through channels till it was time for bed.”
AA2 “It was just….you know, the boredom.”
AA1 “I know.”

And they left. After I washed my hands, I looked around the bathroom for a hidden camera and / or Alan Funk. You know, the old guy from “Candid Camera”? Because I had a hard time believing that it was a real, serious conversation.

Because I’ve had a lot of problems in life, but I’ve never been bored. Well, I would be if I had to sit through an episode of the TV show “JAG” without doing anything else, but I’ve never had to. I mean I’ve been bedridden, for weeks at a time, and I’ve never, in my whole life, been bored! There is always something to do. When I couldn’t get out of bed, I made birthday cards for people, did scrap books, caught up on my reading, did my checkbook (hell, if you have dyscalculia, like I do, that can take up two days by itself!) I talked to people on the phone. I made up English lyrics for the Spanish songs that floated in through my window. I redesigned the room in my head. I did cross stitch. Certainly, I was lonely at times, but I was never bored!

And these women had their health. Presumably they could have gone anywhere in the house, and done almost anything that they wished: made cookies, rented a movie, worked out, gone to visit someone or redone / reorganized anything in their home to make it prettier, easier, better. What had happened to them? Were they under a spell? Had they been lulled to sleep in some way?

I never knew another person like that, and I still don’t. The Hub says “I could live several life times and never get done all the things I’d like to try – and that’s just the (woodworking) projects I’d like to try.” My first husband was never like that, even at times when he was seriously ill, recovering from major surgeries, too ill to look at a ballgame on TV or read. He’d visualize ballgames in his head, or write songs which he set on paper later. None of my friends have ever been that way – everyone I know is brimming over with projects, concepts, ideas for businesses, books, web sites, volunteer groups that they’d like to be more involved with.

Don’t get me wrong. Everyone has times where they “veg out” in front of the TV or the computer. Everyone gets tired and goes for passive entertainment from time to time. But I don’t know anybody who would not have a glimmer of an idea about what to do to occupy themselves if the TV program they planned to watch was pre-empted.

After getting over the shock of it, I had another thought. I wondered, “What if people like those women are ‘normal’ and my friends and family are the ones who are the minority of the population?” It gave me a sort of queasy feeling, and I decided not to think about it too much.

But, on the other hand, I have lately been running into another kind of person with another kind of attitude which is shocking to me. I think the word for this attitude is “jaded” – somebody let me know if I’m way off here.

“Did the boss reach you in time so you didn’t drive down to work Monday?” my co-worker asked.

“Yeah! Talk about luck to get that extra day off.”

“Humph. I guess. But don’t you wish she’d called you earlier so you could have really done something?”

“Well. I was just happy to get the day off.”

“That’s the trouble with you. You’re too easily satisfied.” She commented.

This is the person who has said to me, three times now, “Don’t you ever just feel like that old song? There used to be an old song called ‘Is That All There Is?’ I mean, well, you’re younger than me….but I feel that way all the time. I can’t believe this is all there is to life.”

Somewhat tellingly, this person is a “Baby Boomer”. She’s been married, had two children, traveled internationally to locations I would consider very exotic. She had another long term relationship after her marriage ended, she has pets, she has friends. Although I suppose she’s had some financial problems and health problems I don’t think they were any worse than mine – of course, I didn’t go through them, so perhaps they were terrible for her. She truly seems disappointed, in spite of the fact that her health is good now, and things are looking up for her.

I was interested, so asked, “All what is to life? What do you feel like you are missing?”

“Well. I don’t know. Something. I mean all I do is work. I have to work so hard to keep body and soul together!”

“Hmm. Maybe you should try a little bargain hunting. It’s a lot of fun. I bet I could make you some iced tea at home every bit as good as that stuff you buy. Or you could switch to store brand soda water instead of Perrier”

“What fun would that be? Making iced tea? More work.”

“Well, I guess it depends on how you look at it.”

I thought about it. Okay, it is work, in a way. I mean, it’s not sitting around reading a magazine. But how could you do it and think ‘is that all there is’? As you pour the boiling water over the tea leaves the lovely scent of the tea comes up from them. You watch as the tea infuses the water – you can see it, watching the top of the pot, a glowing golden brown color drifting through the water as a stream. You can stir in sugar – tempest in a tea pot! Watch those patterns going around. You can, at least at my house, go out and pull up fresh mint from the garden by the house. And, I’m sorry, I just can’t imagine not being impressed by the scent of fresh mint. Even my dog is impressed by the scent of fresh mint. (“Hey. It’s a plant. But it smells like you can eat it. But it’s a plant.” He sniffs it and wrinkles his forehead.) And that’s just spearmint that grows like a weed. It IS a weed. There are so many other kinds of mint, each one it’s own mint miracle. Then not only do your hands smell wonderful, but the tea smells even better when you add it. Next the ice – and a piece might fall to the floor….I realize that other people don’t have the particular joy of watching a mastiff chase an ice cube around the kitchen floor, snuffling eagerly at it: “Hey! It’s a toy! It’s a treat! There it goes! It’s slippery! It’s gone! Hey. Why is the floor all wet?” But there’s still that happy crackle of the ice as it goes into the still warm tea. If the pitcher is glass you can watch cracks form in the ice – ice in the middle of summer! If our great-grandparents saw how easy that was, they wouldn’t be asking “is that all there is?”

Of course, depression dulls such pleasures. But it doesn’t obliterate them completely. It was when I was most depressed that I learned to look for them, to look everywhere for the hard-to-see good, least I be overwhelmed by the obvious-bad.

Most interesting to me is this question: what has made me different from my current and past co-workers? Is it just life experience? Has limited mobility lead me to focus naively on what pleasure can be gained from the mundane? Has pain sharpened my appreciation for the smallest pleasure or comfort? Is it a matter of expectation? They say that people are most happy when their experience is better than their expectations. Are my standards too low? Don’t I expect enough, and therefore not push myself to gain or do more?
At least I’m not bored, but I wonder if I should be. Are bored people happier? Would my life be easier if I could find enjoyment in television? Would I feel more connected with others around me, like the two assistants did?

Still, it’s too late now to change, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to. Maybe I have accomplished something since, at least, I’m comfortable with my own life.