Be Wary of Happiness

You know how there are times when your life seems in perfect sync. The traffic lights all turn green in front of you while driving with the windows down and a perfect breeze (both temperature and strength of gust wise) blows through your hair and the sky is a particularly beautiful shade of blue you really don’t think you’ve ever seen before and the radio starts playing your all-time favorite song. The world seems to be a perfect place where only happiness and joy reside so you find yourself grinning so big the corners of your mouth are meeting somewhere on the back of your head. You know those kinds of moments? Be very careful what you do in those kinds of moments.

I had a moment like that once. Then I did it. I made the fatal mistake. I said something out loud. I remember it very well. Things were all top of the morning and the devil doesn’t know you’re dead until you’ve already been in heaven for an hour. I felt like I was in a sugar-coated Norman Rockwell painting when I said, to no one in particular because I was alone in my car, “Life is good.” A quarter of a mile later I was standing next to my car which had just made horrible noises and decided the only way it would ever move again was either with a tow cable or an earthquake whichever came first. True story.

In my family we refer to this phenomenon as the Cosmic Equalizer. If you are a sports fan you’ve heard coaches say things like, “we have to make sure the highs don’t get too high and the lows don’t get too low.” This sounds like hokey cliché number 759 for sports guys to say, but there is some advice we can glean from this which can keep the cosmic equalizer at bay. Don’t get too happy or the powers that be will have no choice but to bring you back to a certain level of dismalness which most people dwell in the majority of the time.

I tell you all of this so I can make a confession. I am currently in a state of panic and terror only rivaled by the fear felt by pretty young girls in movies featuring guys wearing hockey masks wielding weaponry Genghis Khan would think was overkill (pun was unintentional, but keenly accepted). Things are going entirely too well for the cosmic equalizer not to step in and balance my glee with misery.

Through dogged determination and clear attention to the task at hand my wife has guided this Pyle family into a state of financial health not before known. She jumped on the Dave Ramsey bandwagon and after 32 months has rid us of debt. I feel I can say this without the cosmic equalizer getting too vengeful because we timed this right when the rest of the world has gone into the financial garbage disposal so investing the money we no longer have to send to credit card companies in anything other than a mason jar buried in the backyard makes as much sense as hiring Hannibal Lector to plan the menu for the vegan convention. Timing is still everything.

Living in a state akin to financial stability is a contributing factor to my ever growing fear of the cosmic equalizer. Another nail in the coffin is I got a promotion at work, with a raise in pay. Oh, man, what are my bosses trying to do to me, get me killed or something.

Due to the various positive things currently popping up in my life I feel very strongly I have to temper this with less happy things in order to divert the attention of the cosmic equalizer. To that end I have to self-inflict some discomfort or strife in my life. In the olden days people would wear a hairshirt to cause pain for repentance and atonement. Some would even go so far as to whip themselves causing great pain and leaving behind some truly nasty looking marks. Okay, I don’t think I will use Arthur Dimmesdale or any other self-flagellating guilt-monger as my guide on how to avoid karmic backlash (once again, pun not intended but gladly welcomed).

I think I’ll just watch reality television instead. That should be painful enough to dull the happiness without leaving physical scars, just emotional ones. Scars which linger like when Kris beat out Adam on American Idol…oh, the humanity.