A problem with definitions: Happiness

I was always given free range when it came to deciding the direction I wanted to take when it came to my career. I remember being younger and wanting to heal people with plants. By high school graduation, my career path shifted and instead of clipping plants to make poultices and tinctures, I was to become the owner of a landscaping company. My first year of university was spent hopping from biology class to etymology and social sciences. Lost, I asked my parents for advice. Just like every other, my parents insisted on me becoming a doctor, or a lawyer or a business person just like them. Never was I pressured but I felt as if those were the only other paths out there. 

I had given the sciences a shot, and missed the target. Social sciences weren't my forte either. My next step was to take the plunge in to business. I took marketing and finance. I loved marketing but numbers weren't my friend. At the end of that semester, I continued on in to a business management program.
I was "blessed" by a solid job offer the day I graduated and Boy, was I excited. That year, I relocated 4 hours away and started this "perfect" job of mine. 

I should warn you that things move quickly in my life. 9 weeks into my first, career-focused job, I was let go because of a very high score on the incompatibility index with my soon to be supervisor.

The moment my boss told me that "we won't be a good fit", I was overcome by an incredible feeling of joy that i couldn't explain. I stared back at this woman who, for the previous nine weeks, I was ready to do anything to impress. I sat there, trying to mask the grin taking over my face, by pretending to read the termination letter she handed me. Before embarrassing myself by taking off skipping and jumping, I thanked her for the opportunity and wished her all the best.

That night, I broke my lease and packed everything I could in my still-new SUV I had just bought to get me to and from this job I thought I would still have. Even with the finance and insurance payments on my mind and no employment to fund them, the warmth and inexplicable happiness still hung around.

Morning came and I hopped in the overloaded car and headed south with no destination in mind.

I drove for 2 days until a call came in for a 2 month marketing gig that payed an unbelievable amount and included travel across Canada. How could I say no? I crossed half a dozen states in the following six days. Before I knew it, the feeling faded and I arrived in BC. I had to wait two weeks until the start date of the marketing program. In that time, I took a few oil field courses and applied to a few jobs so that I had something to fall back on after the project. Two days before setting off to Toronto for the marketing job, I got a call from an oil field company that was offering a larger contract. I accepted, turned down the other (they had yet to send me a contract) and found myself in Northern Alberta, 2 hours north of one of the northernmost cities.

Poor management, unpaid wages, and the contract getting cut short pushed me to head back south and find a new job. One hundred and seventy-eight applications later, I found myself relocating to Edmonton, AB to work as a millwright, a long stretch from my business-oriented education. Nevertheless, I gave it a fair shot and now find myself in a sort of a pickle.

My parents have always been supportive and wanted me to succeed. But over the last year or two, Iève begun questioning what success really is or means. My findings are, well... mixed. For some, money, executive job title, recognition, reputation have been the single description. Countless new-age or at the very least, contemporary thinkers have narrowed it down to happiness. HAPPINESS (or as the Québecois would say: A-PEENIS), is a fascinating and very individual concept. 

I bring this up because a promotion, from my days of getting home, my skin smelling of diesel exhaust and hands stained with oil, could likely come to an end. I would me moving out of the field and in to an office, with my 84 hours a week being cut down to a modest 40 without much of a pay cut. Although this, for many, would be an exciting opportunity which would give them back the personal time they've been missing out on for the last few months, for me, is discomforting. In fact, every inch of my body cringes at the very thought of accepting the offer. Logically, it is a fantastic opportunity. Good pay, good hours, good experience, yet my heart and stomach feel like they're being crushed in a vice.

I feel compelled to jump. To run away. To drop the reputation I have built for myself here and to forego the potential raise and title that may be handed to me. I want to get in to my truck once again, and head South. Even with my current financial obligations, the fuzzy feeling I had the day I left my first career job is creeping back. Is that happiness? If so, what does it mean? Is this not the time and place for a career? Is there something more pressing than making money right now? The more I write, the clearer it gets. I don't want to do this. Not now. I need to go. Every day here, sitting, waiting, working, stuck, is a struggle.

Maybe this "happiness" thing is more than anybody has previously defined. Money, title and praise? maybe for some. What if it was something a little more divine? I mean it in the unworldly sense; as in something that is not quantifiable and only emotionally qualifiable. Imagine a puppeteer pulling the strings on his marionette. Now imaging you are that puppet. Before the show, you walk around the set, going about your business, free to roam as far as the strings will let you. The show begins. The strings tighten up. You've built up a rhythm. You feel the need to continue what you were doing before the lights came up, but the tension on the strings is steering you in a different direction. Sure you can resist it, stretching out the strings as you go. The resistance weighs heavily on you and the discomfort grows. You have a decision to make. Relax, let the strings take you to where the story leads, or continue working, with the elasticity of the strings decreasing with every move until they finally snap. What happens then? I'm terrified to find out.  

Relapse

I was 22. She looked like she was in her mid twenties.

Somehow, I found myself sitting with this woman. Although she was so familiar, we had never met. I had seen her a dozen times on TV, but that didn’t phase me. We were casual, as if we had been long time friends, yet I was aware this was the first time we were meeting. She was battling her inner demons, and I could see it. She was lost and I would soon be helping her find her way.

Tonight, she was to get on stage and perform her bubbly kids show as she had always done. Goofy humor, poorly produced stunts and a musical performance that rivaled Nikki Minaj as usual. Something compelled me to help her. To speak a few select words that would alter her course that night. Insignificant thoughts that would have ultimate repercussions.

As she sat at her desk, contemplating how she got where she is and where she was going, I made a passing suggestion that she try acapella and forget all the rehearsals she had labored through. She looked at me in shock. As if I had just sacrificed a baby lamb over that very same desk. Unknowingly, I had done something just as big.

The lights came on and the studio audience, spread across red theater chairs, cheered. She made her entrance on to the stage calmly, her bubbly persona had evaporated. Her show began and instruments rested on the stage without their musicians. Her voice pierced through the applause and all went silent. Unsure of how to feel or handle the alter ego they were witnessing, the crowd, one by one, made their way on to the stage and began to improvise. While one young girl took a seat at the drums, another picked up a tambourine.

At the end of the show, once that red on air sign finally dimmed, she made her way back to the desk she left me at. She had an odd look in her eyes, one that I had never seen before. There was a spark of curiosity, a glimmer of fear and… hope. It arose in me a burning fire that blurred my common sense and pushed me to invite her to a park table where she would meet my close friend. Overwhelmed by the feelings generated by the performance, she accepted and we made our way to a picnic table lodged between to large maple trees. She brought her best friend along, the one she had worked with for so many years. Beside me sat my friend, a tall, slender 25 year old who had the wisdom of a 200 yr old. She mistakenly thanked me for my advice as the four of us sat on the splintered table beneath those trees. She asked me who I was and I could only reply that I was a fan. She looked perplexed but accepted it as a fair answer. I told her I had watched the show for 5 years when I was younger. No response. Something was wrong. She started scribbling on the table. Her math wasn’t adding up. I glanced down. Through the chaos of numbers, I noticed that none exceeded 1991. I looked up, stared in to her eyes as if I could find the answer for her, buried deep in to her mind. I found nothing. I asked for the date. She answered 1991. It made no sense yet I did not need to question it. I had learned through an eccentric writer that time is not linear. That both past and present is fought in the present. My brain raced. If it was 1991, I thought to myself, and this woman is already in her twenties, then she was born in the 70s. Simple. However, if I was able to see her past at my present, perhaps I could see her future and provide her with the help her soul begged for.

I needn’t say anything; a simple look in his direction communicated it all. I knew it was wrong and so did her. Yet with a gentle smile on his face, he slowly opened his canvas and leather bound notebook. In it, pale blue lines stretched from West to East carrying grey scribbles, which until now had remained illegible to me. This was the first time its coded messages had revealed themselves to me. He opened it to one page, then another. He stopped and lay his finger on to a particular line about 8 rows down. It was broken down in to columns with years at the top. He pointed to the first: 2012. The corresponding cell contained two exclamation marks and a small pencil drawing of a turnip. The next held three exclamation marks and a drawing of a chili pepper. As if I had understood this code all my life, I dragged the book closer to me, and looked up at this woman. I could not describe what was about to happen. Some have called it an Aleph. I just closed my eyes.

Success had vanished years ago and she had not since walked across a stage. I had warned her against using a particular oil, one that I had not yet heard of. I told her she confide in her closest friend when she discovered it as she could easily lose herself. She was as perplexed as was I.

I was transported to the coffee shop where she sat with the very same best friend that was there that day under the maples. They were older; probably in their 40s. She told her friend about her experience with the oil. The feelings that rushed through her heart and body. The things it made her do. She spoke about how she explored her body, how her mind shifted, how she no longer dreamed of being in a relationship. For a split second, she glanced over in my direction, as if I had been there all along providing moral support. But there was nothing I could say. This was not my place. Her life shifted after I had helped her see what she called future. What felt like seconds for me was years for her. She stood in a dark and dingy room with an older man. He held a child in his arms as tears rolled down his cheeks. He was at the end of his. The wrinkles on his face were scars of a lifetime of hard work, survival through pain and suffering. There he stood, his skin no longer able to absorb the pain that had become a neuce around his heart. For a moment I hovered, confused and unsure of what I was seeing. The woman was back. Her hairline had receded and her rich black locks had been painted grey with age. Her eyes that once sparkled with curiosity, fear and hope, mimicked the swollen eyes of recently caught snapper: large and void of emotion.

A piercing pain spread from my heart, filling every cavity of my body, enveloping my lungs and making it hard to breathe. I had known her for merely and hour in my time. But the hurt was enough to last a lifetime. It was not pity that drove me to interject. It was a far greater force, once that exploded out of my subconscious and paralyzed my logical thinking.

Words with such conviction that they felt as if they were being spoken by someone else, expelled from my mouth. The words were for her. My arms, as if being manipulated by a puppeteer’s line, reached out. I grasped the child and held him out to this woman who no longer looked anything like the woman I had seen on TV. I looked in to her mellow, faded eyes and told her to kiss the child. She didn’t understand. To kiss him like she had never kissed anyone before. To pour her love in to this small being as if this will be the last time she will ever love anyone again. Clumsily, she stared down in to its brown eyes and brushed her face against his. Louder, I yelled at her to kiss him as if we only had seconds to spare.

Moments later, I was back at the rickety picnic table surrounded by my three friends with a canvas and leather bound notebook under my arm. What I had seen, moments ago, was much more than the future of this woman sitting across from me. I caught a glimpse of us.

Chapter 1

I've hit a wall. A big wall. A tall one. A thick one. Made up of bricks. Red bricks. And the mortar isin't about to give. I take a step closer. Maybe I can force my way through it. The wind picks up. Dust blows in to my eyes. Fuck.. It clears. I'm facing the wall again. This time the wall looks taller. Much taller. And the ground scrapes my chin. I'm an ant. Shit! No time for questions. I raise my right leg, then my left. Little claws grasp the porous stone. Foot by foot, claw by claw, millimeter by millimeter, I climb. Higher and higher. The challenging terrain, the penetrating sun, the distance ahead of me brings me solace.


Buzzer sounds. 


Morning breaks and white light creeps through the wooden blinds separating me from prying primal eyes and the natures souls, hovering over the warm damp river rocks in hopes of finding light. The unmistakeable rush and whistle of the creek inching its way over the bedrock is comforting, making getting out of bed ever more difficult. Last night's worries ease with every waking moment. With one swift pull, the blinds recede in to the ceiling, leaving in its wake the full bodied warmth of the northern sunlight. The cold, dry concrete floor sends a surge of signals up the nervous system. As if a switch had been flipped on, Mark springs from the comfort of his solid wood bed kept warm by bison pelts and white cotton linens.


The room is bare. No paintings hang on the slate grey walls; no furniture, with the exception of 2 floating shelves, where an assortment of neatly-folded bamboo infused T-shirts, carpenter jeans and tan cargo shorts lie piled with surgical precision. The heat coming through the wall of windows is rising. A bead of sweat rolls down his forehead. With routine accuracy, Mark makes his way through the contemporary 1 bedroom house in to the kitchen where professional grade copper cookware hangs above the wood fired stove. Despite the modern design of this rural oasis, the primitive stove seems to have found its place alongside the custom crafted while enamel cupboards and stainless steel cabinets. Footsteps away, the polished concrete floors extend in to a lounge area, where an italian leather sofa rests adjacent to a caribou skin. The animal's antlers hung centered on the North wall break the monotony of the room. Despite the modernity of the structure, technology is scarce. There is no tv in sight. microwave is inexistant. even a fridge is no where to be found. Apart from the meticulous interior design, the only connection to society is the outdated macbook resting on the couch and the analog alarm clock on the zen inspired bed frame.

Casually, Mark lights the stove. Without hesitation, the dry wood catches fire. The smell of burning pine escapes through the cast iron oven door, moving swiftly and ghostly through the kitchen and in to the bedroom, passing through the lounge. As if summoned by a higher power, it glides through the air and around the antlers, floating high above the sofa, only to gather over the bed. Had Mark walked by the bedroom, at that very moment, he would have noticed the peculiar figure the cloud took on over the bed before it dissipated. Mark, however, had a more important calling to answer to: hunger.