Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Definitions: Bluebird Of Happiness

Hike your own hike. Peck your own rainbow.

(1) The official Bluebird of Happiness was the creation of Maurice Maeterlinck, a Belgian playwright and poet who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1911. One of his plays was the Blue Bird, written in 1908. The Blue Bird is a fairy tale in which Mytyl and Tyltyl, the children of a woodcutter, fall asleep after a disappointing Christmas and dream that a fairy sends them to find the bird that is blue. They have various adventures but return home without fulfilling their quest, though they do loan their pet dove (which they suddenly notice is blue) to a sick neighbor child, who then recovers. The moral of the story is that true happiness is found close to home, and is a result of making the journey, not from reaching the destination, and from selflessness. This has nothing to do with hiking or backpacking, usually, though you never know.

(2) The other Bluebird of Happiness has something to do with taking a bath in freezing water, which, when you think about it, does not sound at all amusing.

However, that is only in relation to a cushy, carefree city life, which does not actually exist, despite the propaganda.

When you compare bathing from a water bottle so cold that the thermometer doesn't have numbers for it to spending the second half of your life in a cubicle, dueling with mutants and feebs all day, the calculation is no longer pointless.

And there is always the option of going Neanderthal.

Who needed to wash in the good old days? Hey? Hey? You're backpacking, and a stiff, shiny, well-buffed skin-armoring lacquer composed of equal parts dirt and dried sweat approaches 99% mosquito-impermeability.

But being clean is fantastic. So, so nice, even if the feelings associated with attaining that state are akin to having your living skin peeled back, and that makes it all worthwhile. (The after-glow, not the skin peeling.)

Once done, the grim stabbing shock of ice water, the frantic, fumbling soap-and-rinse, and the brisk, chattering rub with whatever piece of clothing most resembles a towel and is also least filthy eventually produces a warm rosy bloom of satisfaction covering great areas of the body and soul, except, of course, for that little bluebird dangling there in its nest, trying to hide until spring.

But even he is pleased, in his own catatonic way, and will thank you later.