Make Merry

I learned years ago from a gifted psychotherapist friend that one should make “merry.” I worked as a therapist in his counseling center in the early 90s. Occasionally I was informed that the staff would have a get together, the usually drinks, usual snacks and the usual suspects. When I asked what was the occasion, I was met with a shrug or what need is there to ask, just go with it, a remnant of the 60s. In fact, Ben did this for the entire staff for no reason other than to make merry, which I cherish till this day, a celebration of blood running through one’s system and that I haven’t croaked as yet.  As I grow older, I choose to make merry more often, given what psychological and monetary change is in my pocket.

In my last blog, “Acoustic Research, Pun Intended,” I more subtly applied the same insight to acquiring a vintage stereo system. As I waited for the amplifier, I bought some records off EBay; while that was going on I ordered a vintage Pioneer turntable and while all this was going on I bought new speakers from Amazon. It is the reaching out for, the taking in, the feeling of your being mercury spilled to the floor, merging into nook and cranny which self actualizes me — and you? Do you wait until life macerates you or do you venture out with spear from the primeval cave? Have hope — all these are learnable behaviors. Our culture makes us constipated with the hard suppository of bullshit of what and what not we can do. Think diarrhea and have a better existence. Nothing like an anal metaphor to get you to move, no pun intended.

Of late I have chosen to make merry by fantasizing a dream I may never obtain as part and parcel of my merriment: I want to move to Costa Rica. Oh, any reasonable Latin American country will do. I am finding out more about CR but CR doesn’t drive me so much as the merriment of trying to get a little retirement home in this country — it could be Belize, Panama, maybe Puerto Rico, Ecuador. et al. It smacks of the impossible dream but I am not into self-torture, unless you call Jewish anxiety such an experience. The impossible dream may very well become possible. I remember an anecdote I came up with as a therapist. It was for clients who had tunnel vison or were stuck or could not conceive of other choices or options in their lives; they were popsicles, frozen to their sticks. I would ask them to imagine standing on the shore and looking out upon the waves, very calming as it is. I’d then ask them to tell me what they made of the waves reaching the beach. Some of them were too literal, or self-blind. At last I would end the struggle and tell them that waves spit deep into the beach sands, others never arrive, some are middling and that if you looked across the span of the beach and waters coming in there was a vast variety of intakes here and there, of differing dimensions.

Sometimes I had to bring all this together. I’d tell them that this paralleled life’s choices. That no one wave comes across the shore at the same rate, the same dimension; to wit, when making breakfast one doesn’t wait until the coffee brews, one makes toast, one gets the cup out, one cracks the eggs for the omelet. The point of the anecdote is to help them act, to choose, to do other things until their ship comes in. It is very much like making merry. I’ll read about CR, google sites on CR, which I have done; contact real estate agents; Visa requirements; taxes for ex-pats if any, an endless array of things to do rather than waiting for CR to come into shore and dock itself. In the stirring up, in the arousing of feelings, we can truly make it happen. I did this more than 20 years ago when I came home to Rochelle and told her that I would go nuts if I didn’t have something else in my life as a teacher, some respite, some place away from the maddening crowd and the collective stupidities and inanities of schools. Withihn two years I owned property in upstate Canaan and build a little house — and the man who made that happen was Ben. It was all an act of serendipity — he came to me one night in my office and asked if I was serious about a country house. I said yes! He said that he owned land upstate and if I wanted come take a look. And so Ben’s merriment made my merriment come true.. Before that as a family we took small trips to New jersey, upstate New York to scout out possibilities, much like making that breakfast — no frozen moments for me. And so CR is on my mind. Sharing it with Jane has only led to a mutual dream, a mutual desire and mutual risk taking; I don’t have much gelt in the bank, but somehow I’ll make it happen. Of course, we have a small issue of mortality here. I don’t want to crack coconuts by backing up on them with my Mr. Mobility chair.