There’s a lot to be happy about, you know!
The other day, I was taking a clear-my-mind walk around my office building when a fresh-faced 20-something dude on a bike came cruising by on the sidewalk and yelled “There’s a lot to be happy about, you know!”
I’m not sure if he was just so exuberant that he had to share his explosion of joy or if he was admonishing me for looking morose. Either way, I laughed. I happen to be going through a rather happy time in my life, and that particular moment was lovely. In that split second, I was absorbed in watching the patterns of the tree shadows on pavement and inspecting the textures of plants, which are more remarkable the more attention you pay them. The neighbors surely think I’m bonkers.
Perhaps the young dude mistook my concentration for melancholy. I know that I have done the same in the past, and it made me realize just how wrong my impressions of people could have been. It’s easy to make assumptions about someone based on a momentary impression. I started to wonder how often we let these impressions guide our beliefs about people and the world around us—and how easy it is to impose our own beliefs about how they should be instead. The young dude meant well, of course. I saw my younger self in him. But that question stayed alive in me for days: What’s lost when our own mind-state veils us from clearly seeing the world around us?