There’s a man in a captain’s
hat who stands on the corner of California and Battery in San Francisco every
week. As I pass him on my way home from work, he greets pedestrians, hands full
of those Homeless Press newspapers, with a big, cheery grin on his face. He
calls me “young lady” and he asks how I am, beaming as if we were old friends
who happened upon each other coincidentally. The first few weeks of this
routine I found it annoying, having to awkwardly take my headphones out and
say, “I’m sorry?” Yet, unfazed, he would repeat himself, and I’d force a smile
and reply, “I’m doing well, thank you,” before returning my ear buds to my
ears, and allowing my face to sink back into a tired frown.
On a particularly gruesome
Monday, I reached the California and Battery intersection with my headphones
out, prepared for our 15-word exchange. He smiled, addressed me as young lady,
and asked, “How are you?”
“Ready to be done with today,”
I replied. I added a sigh of exasperation for effect, to really drive home my distress.
His smile never wavered. “With this sunset?” he gestured towards the uphill
climb of California Street, where you could see the setting sun not yet
disappeared behind the hill. “Nah, I hope it stays today forever.”
I had to give it to him, there’s
nothing quite like a sunset here in California. I politely wished him a good
evening, and as the crosswalk sign lit up its little white man, a creeping
sense of foolishness settled in the pit of my stomach. This man, with his captain’s
hat and his newspapers and his evident homelessness, had just admonished my
self-serving grumpiness with a sunset. And I, who was livid with my coworkers,
frustrated with my friends, and consumed with planning the next fifteen steps
of my life, couldn’t be bothered with it. It
happens every day, I thought in defense, what’s so great about that? I watched him smile at strangers,
tipping his hat to them as they walked by, and I grew envious. How could
someone with so little have so much more peace of mind than me?
I wanted to ask; I needed to
know. I wanted to say, “What are you even smiling about?” But I couldn’t think of a way to phrase that question
without sounding horrible. So instead, I tried to manifest his happiness for
myself. I smiled back wider, and more earnestly. I bought his newspapers. I contemplated buying a captain’s hat.
None of it stuck.
I’m a thorough, meticulous
person. When I set my mind to a task, I run it down with precision, every step
crosschecked and calculated. In my professional life, my hyper-organized,
careful nature is met with commendation. In my personal life, it’s met with
rolling eyes. So when I began to fill my Netflix queue with documentaries on
happy people, no one was surprised.
After a few features landed
in the “Recently Watched” column, my roommate simply asked if I had managed to
solve my “happiness problem.”
“I think it’s the stuff,” I
said. “Look at this place, we have so many…things.”
That Friday night I began,
and by Sunday evening, I had donated, trashed, or recycled over half of my
possessions. I picked through everything, down to my absurd collection of
threadbare Target tank tops, and asked myself the same question: Does this make
me happy? Sometimes in the form of, “Is
this even wearable in public?” It was alarming how often the answer was no.
At the end of the weekend, my closets doors were finally able to close; I donated
books and sweatshirts and like, four duvet covers. I looked at piles and piles
of stuff and said, “this doesn’t make me happy,” and it felt great.
On Monday morning, I was
rejuvenated and full of possibility, but by midday I was in a fight with my
brother, frustrated with work, and as I walked in the front door that evening,
I couldn’t tell you what the sunset looked like. Only that I was fairly certain it had happened. I knew my
possessions didn’t make me happy, but I was no closer to figuring out what did.
When I was in therapy, which
I was for almost two years in my early twenties, my psychologist would ask me
to write down the things I saw myself doing when I finally “happy.” She said
that if I could paint a picture of my daily life, I might be able to figure out
how to get there. I told her about my dream job, about how my house would look.
I told her I wanted a dog. And she would always respond, “And that would make
you happy?”
“Well, not only that,” I said. At first, I didn’t
really get the point. She rephrased the question, and sent me off to try again.
The next week I came back, I
told her about the types of activities I saw myself doing when I was my ideal
person. I’d say things like, I would be the kind of girl who reads books and drinks
tea; a girl who hosts dinner parties for her friends where we eat at a table
instead of in front of the television, like
adults. I would be active and athletic, but could also lose hours of time
with just a notebook and a pen, scratching down insightful, witty conjectures
to better the lives of the world around me. And
maybe I would be capable of having a
single cocktail at a bar, as opposed to five. Maybe.
Again, she’d ask me, “And these things would make you happy?”
“I think so, yeah. But I
just don’t think I’m that kind of person.”
My heart sank as the words
came tumbling out of my mouth because I knew it was true. That’s the stupid
thing therapy does to you. It makes you say things that are real, and then you
have to deal with them. It’s the worst.
She put her pen down, and
tilted her head in confusion, as she did
so often with me, and said, “Well, what kind of person do you think you are?”
I must have been staring at
my hands for no less than four hours; it also could have been thirty seconds.
Time is irrelevant when someone asks you a question you’ve spent your entire
life trying to avoid answering. Tears spilled out in streams rather than single
drops, and when I opened my mouth, only a choked sob came out.
“I don’t know what kind of
person I am. I’m a disaster,” I said while hastily wiping the tears from my
eyes, like I was going to pretend I
wasn’t crying. “I just don’t think I fit. Like some days I dance around my
apartment to Top 40 hits, and I sing along really, really loudly. Other days I
binge-watch television in yoga pants that I have never, ever done actual yoga
in. Then there are days when I read and write and make dinner and don’t talk to
a single other human being. And sometimes I want to call up a friend and go out
to drink and chat and watch other people drinking and chatting. Sometimes I
take the time to dry my hair, but most days I cannot think of a more boring
activity. I feel like a lump of tangled, multi-color Christmas lights, a
disaster of inconsistent thoughts, and I try to just pick one color, like I’m
just going to be the blue lights, but when you start pulling on the blue lights
string, you get a yellow light and a red light, and then you’re right back
where you started.”
“Well,” she said, not
remarking on the several steps past crazy I had taken because I literally paid
her not to, “Do you think if you were only blue lights, you’d be happier?”
I thought about it for a
moment. “I think I just hate when Christmas lights get tangled up.”
She laughed. “It could be if
you spent less time trying to pick out the blue lights, and more time embracing
the strands as a whole, you’d stop wasting time trying to define yourself by
the standards of painted bulbs.”
Maybe the man with the captain’s
hat had reached this conclusion, too. Rather than fighting his individuality,
he had learned to embrace it. Maybe that’s why he could love every single
sunset; he had learned to love the differences.
My authentic, multi-colored
self is a myriad of hobbies and interests, oftentimes dissonant in nature, in the way that gives you chills, rather
than makes your ears bleed. I like what I like, and I like the things I
like out of a minuscule collection of things I have tried. For a long time I
avoided new experiences in fear of being overrun with too many differently
colored lights. With too many possibilities, it becomes impossible to know
where to begin, and for a girl who googled
“how to be happy,” that can be a debilitating notion.
There are days I have to
say, out loud, “This is okay.” There are
times I have said this, out loud, in public places. Strangely, it helps. It
helps quell the panic of too many lights with no discernible order, and it
helps me notice the sunsets. The other day, on my way home, I stopped next to
the man in the captain’s hat, and I watched the last sliver of sun drop just
below the crest of the Nob Hill. He turned and watched it with me for a moment,
and then said, “That’s a good one there, isn’t it?”
“It is.” I smiled. I turned
to him, offered him money for one of his newspapers, and tucked it away in my
bag. “Hey,” I added as I started to walk away, “I really like your hat.”
He smiled and laughed a bit.
“Maybe we can find you one!”
“Nah,
there’s only one Captain. That’s all you," I said.
Though, I do believe Admiral is still available.
Hey, you know who needs an Admiral, right? The Avengers. DIBS.
