“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realise this, and you will find strength”
Expensive yes, but the end of the world had a beautiful quietness to it. Day two and the alarm clock was a memory, a throwback, abandoned to the past like a TDK 90 cassette tape. HB pencils to re-wind time. We slept with the windows open, disturbed from our lockdown slumber by nothing but birds, clean air and otherworldly dreams.
Snooze.
Gratitude diaries are to happiness as social distancing is to stopping the spread. Barack Obama keeps one. And Richard Branson. But I wasn’t head of Virgin Airlines, just trying to pass the time. And avoid news on the latest outbreaks in Papua New Guinea, Vietnam and Peru.
The Queen cancelled a garden party.
What was happening in North Korea?
It’s all about perspective.
Someone else’s.
A notification pinged. Another Corona Milestone. International media synced to the satellites, like some kind of interstellar information orchestra playing bad news to the choir.
250,000 cases worldwide.
I turned off notifications. Forever.
Have you ever asked a nearly-four-year-old what they’re grateful for?
“Gratitude,” I said. “Rhymes with attitude. It’s like happy.”
“That’s silly,” Alice said, balancing on her right foot. Wobbling. Proud. “Why don’t you just say happy?”
Child logic. Sometimes the only logic.
Apocalypse Mommy and I searched among the negative rubble of a global pandemic for gratitude. Alice gave seventeen reasons to be happy before we blinked. Fairies, everything, scary things, yoghurt, maple syrup, the colour of mist, Mummy, cake, Jupiter, stickers and glue.
Adults choose concrete, tangible occurrences to be grateful for. Alice wasn’t handicapped by such primitive thinking.
“I’m happy,” she said, holding her breath (Damn you Wim Hoff). “To have pasta for breakfast.”
“Says the girl who was eating pens yesterday,” I said, reminding her of dietary choice. “Besides, you don’t have pasta for breakfast.”
“No,” she said. “But I could. I see in my head. I’m happy for that. Head pasta. Pasta in my head. For breakfast.”
Alice was happy about everything, fascinated by the tiniest revelation. She fell in love every instant with details in miniature. We saw a squirrel eating a nut. She was happier than you or I would be if it started raining cake and gold and kisses.
Children are the definition of mindfulness, replicas of the Buddha, their mind sitting in an eternal present, devoid of all notions of past and future. No need for meditation, reflection or Epicurean thought on how to live ones life. Just get up and paint on the wall, create worlds, fall into daydreams and bounce on the chair, bounce on the bed, bounce through the day as the adult world tumbles into a new version of its old self.
The next day I’d fill the happiness diary with existential dreams and observations in the fabric of an unseen universe.
After lunch (pasta) we went to the skate-park. Day two and we were building resilience. Alice smashed up her knees, tore her dress, cut three fingers, fell on some broken glass and hit her face on a half-pipe. But she kept getting back up.
Until the police arrived and roped off the skate-park.
“These are shared spaces,” they said. “They are closed. Indefinitely.”
Alice wasn’t sad as we walked home.
I was.
Until she told me not to be.
“It’s OK Daddy, tomorrow we can skateboard in the house.”