Happiness
When I heard the poet read this, I couldn’t believe it. What could be better than wisdom mixed with laughter?
Coconut
Bear with me I
want to tell you
something about
happiness
it’s hard to get at
but the thing is
I wasn’t looking
I was looking
somewhere else
when my son found it
in the fruit section
and came running
holding it out
in his small hands
asking me what
it was and could we
keep it it only
cost 99 cents
hairy and brown
hard as a rock
and something swishing
around inside
and what on earth
and where on earth
and this was happiness
this little ball
of interest beating
inside his chest
this interestedness
beaming out
from his face pleading
happiness
and because I wasn’t
happy I said
to put it back
because I didn’t want it
because we didn’t need it
and because he was happy
he started to cry
right there in aisle
five so when we
got it home we
put it in the middle
of the kitchen table
and sat on either
side of it and began
to consider how
to get inside of it
-Paul Hostovsky, Bending The Notes
For a child, happiness is easy – it is whatever wholly and completely interests them at the moment.
But we adults seem rarely to be happy. Instead, we multi-task.
Multi-tasking is a way of fooling ourselves into thinking that we are getting more things done. But multi-tasking doesn’t make us happy. Instead, it is a way of insuring that we will never be focused enough to truly become involved in anything.
We get annoyed with children for demanding that we stop multi-tasking. Why can’t they just be grateful that we are already doing the shopping and baby-sitting while our minds are consumed with important things they can’t possibly understand?
Children can’t understand multi-tasking. But they can understand stress. The heart has only two modes: coherence and incoherence. Happiness is when the heart is coherent, focused, unitary, in relationship. Stress is when the heart is incoherent, scattered, disconnected.
Coherence propagates. Incoherence falls apart.
Hearing Paul read this poem made me happy. So I bought the book and brought it home and read Coconut to my teen-aged son. It made him laugh. Then he started reading some of the other poems.
You can’t always take the coconut home. But you can find the time to stop your multi-tasking and look at what the child is holding in his hands. And once your heart is coherent, many things become possible. Even happiness.
I heard Paul Hostovsky read “Coconut” in a benefit for the Pilot Project at The Old Library in Harvard MA, along with equally catchy poems from his other two books. The reading was organized by editors of the integrated art and literary journal, Wild Apples. This journal is no longer in publication, but the back issues are still available and quite extraordinary!
Comments
Wow, Eve. Your insights about multi-tasking are right on the money, and therefore I am ashamed to say how often I am caught up in it!
We all get caught that way, me included!
My current strategy for single-tasking: It’s spring. So
while I’m driving, I look for flowering trees. It makes
me happy.
If I’m looking at the scenery, I’m not thinking . .
.
But it is interesting to note how used I am to having
my mind going all over the place most of the time. It
almost doesn’t feel like me when it isn’t!
But maybe that’s a good thing. I’d really rather be
appreciating the flowering trees than running a lot of
(mostly anxious) thoughts through my head.
Happiness is reading an article by Eve Kodiak. You have a natural gift for expressing your thoughts.
Thank you, Michael! Now I feel happy, too!
Julie Goodro Apr 07, 2012
Love it! Thanks.