May 2nd, 2006, 08:17 AM
I've smiled more today than ever before in my life
Once when I was visiting Paris with my sister, I heard Sunday morning mass in the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. It's just one of those things you do if you are Catholic and visiting Paris.
My French was even worse at that time than it is now. The first time I heard mass in French was in Québec City.
I didn't follow the readings very well. During the homily, however, the priest was conveying his own meaning and not that of prophets and apostles. He threw the word "sourire" around like a tetherball. I recognized that word. "Smile". He showed the parishoners and tourists how it was done.
You can't really expect me to talk a whole lot about a sermon I heard almost four years ago in a language far from being my own, especially at the time. I just remember connotations. One should smile in good times. One should smile in bad times.
In fifth grade I was the most universally hated kid in the advanced program, to which I was totally new around a meritocracy that'd been changed little since the second grade in terms of student composition. There was one pupil who actually was pretty amicable toward me, but he was never at loss for a comment. When I wore a Webelos shirt, I remember he said "Wee-bee-los are cool, and Seth is my wee-bee-los friend". I still don't get it. One time he just kind of glared at me for a minute, then demanded "Why don't you ever SMILE?!"
KC probably didn't know that I was, in my best estimate, the only actively suicidal student in that fifth-grade class. Earlier in a conversation held last night to be referenced later, I mentioned that the only support I ever received in fifth grade was in response to my DARE speech for which I earned second place (and the first place winner was a total bitch who talked about her "self-esteem balloon" inflating and deflating) and my poem assignment based on Sherman's Raid, which KC used as the work to be critiqued in his own assignment.
KC moved to California or something, and the DARE speech winner went on to deliver the most two-dimensional valedictorian speech I have heard in my many years of attending commencements, profoundly titled "The Blink of an Eye".
The first memorable reference to the positive existence of a Seth smile only came four years later, when my first lasting online friend commented that she really liked my smile in a picture of me between two hot chick friends of mine taken at the band awards banquet. I guess I found the break of character to be appropriate long enough for it to be captured on film.
Around then I figured out that I don't smile much not as a matter of being perpetually depressed, but as a matter of being too pensive. I was the soccer player who was loved and hated for his afro that Freshman year, and rooted for Marilyn Manson after Columbine even though I barely knew his music.
Freshman year of college, however, I smiled plenty (say no to underage drinking, kids) but loved life even less. When the suicide attempt some of you may remember was becoming more and more imminent, I asked the chaplain what to do about happiness. He said I should focus on other things, all joy and happiness being transitory. Maybe if I'd read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations then, rather than two years later, it would have helped me and I'd have averted disaster. Reading it two years later, it was such a downer that I couldn't finish it. At least Boethius was a downer with profound metaphysical insight.
I'm running on a lack of sleep lasting since around 19:30 Sunday evening. Very little of that time has been spent off of the chair upon which I'm now reclined. I was cramming for an Anthropology exam and posting liberally here and elsewhere. At some point I figured out that I needed to talk. I went for a drive ending up at the Newman Center, and I demanded a talk with another chaplain at another university.
Getting what I wanted, hearing what I wanted to hear, I sat down and began the most chaotic essay I've written in post-adolescence. Maybe someone smarter than me will read it and figure out what it means, if anything. Maybe the link to it will get posted here someday. I always hold my audience tight in mind when I write, and this essay was, as Marcus Aurelius called his depressing text, an Ad Ipsum. Just that thought kept me smiling through the whole thing. Bear the good, bear the bad, but try to smile. That essay took around thirteen hours to complete, my only distraction being excretion of coffee I drank yesterday morning until I took a break. I called one of the greatest friends I could ever want, with whom I'd not spoken in far too long. I tried to smile through the whole thing, even with nobody looking. For whatever reason, the webcam has been pointed at gargoyles on my subwoofer.
The gargoyles are referenced in a second essay that does actually have an exterior audience.
I had a hard time smiling as I heard my friend weep on the phone, but sorrow is transitory, too.
Our very own Terra sent me instant messages, and she was very good at giving more reason to smile. Don't underestimate her!
This long, long day of mine is drawing to a close as I decided I'd stop posting when my coffee shisha stopped producing cancer for my lungs.
An alternative title for this thread is "I QUIT, who's coming with me???" It's a personal reference, so don't think I'm calling for mass exodus from the dear forums that have nurtured so much of my development. When the smoke is too thin to enjoy, I'm not going to stop smiling until the day is ended for me. I posted in the Philosophy board about having started looking into Camus, but I never really embarked on that journey beyond the pier.
Is Sisyphus smiling? Memorizing pre-historic site names and locations in Asia isn't how I should have spent my day in any case.
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