There is an old story from the shtetls which I learned from my mother. (A shtetl, by the way, is a small Jewish town in Poland or Russia. Picture the story being told by an old woman with a scarf over her hair, in front of a nice Russian stove, with borsht cooking in the background.)
A man goes to the rabbi and says, "Rabbi, my life is terrible. My wife is always nagging me, the baby is crying, and the potato crop isn't doing very well even after all the work I put into it. What am I to do? I have no peace."
The rabbi thinks for a moment, and says, "Bring in the goat."
So the man goes home and brings the goat into his house, and a few days later he's back at the rabbi's door, saying, "Rabbi, things get worse and worse. My wife is furious with me for bringing the goat indoors, the baby cries from the smell, the potatoes still aren't doing very well and the goat ate all the borsht. What am I to do?"
The rabbi says, "Bring in the chickens."
So the man goes home and brings in the chickens, with the predictable result that he returns to the rabbi the next day to say that not only is his wife livid and the baby squalling and the goat eating the bedding, but the chickens have covered the cottage with feathers and droppings. The rabbi's advice is to bring in the dog.
This continues until the poor man's cottage is filled with every known farmyard animal - cats, cows, geese, sheep - at which point his wife is ready to leave him, the baby's lungs have grown from all the crying, and the house is a wreck. The rabbi then gives the miserable man a stern look and tells him to take all the animals back to the barn where they belong.
Thus the man goes home to a relatively happy wife, the baby's crying is restful by comparison to the animals, and the potato crop appears suddenly successful, perhaps because of all the fertilizer dumped on it by the house's evicted occupants. Life is back to what it was, but appears suddenly more attractive.
This little parable may be easily translated into the Yale idiom. For the nagging wife and the crying baby, read a normal Yale workload. For the goat, read midterm exams. For the chickens, finals. For the assorted other farmyard animals, read the inevitable social traumas and disasters (fights between friends, financial worries, troubles with one's family) which arrive every semester.
Look at Yale now. Here we are, hardly behind on our work yet, with the entire semester ahead of us to squabble and worry and stress. Anticipation is a luxury. Take a few moments - while you still have time - to sit and look at how much we have here: freedom from mandated social, political, and intellectual censorship; roofs over our heads; and food to eat - or at least $105 a week to buy it with.
We need to remember and appreciate this because it seems that human beings have an infinite capacity for being unhappy. When the semester hasn't even started yet, when we have no major upheavals in our lives, and when the dining halls are actually feeding us, we still manage to find fault with most of what we encounter.
The strange thing is that we are not, as a rule, much more unhappy about midterms than we are about whatever it is that bothers us during shopping period. It's as though there's a certain minimal level of unhappiness which we have to fill in order to function normally, like the carbon dioxide we must exhale when we breathe. But surely angst is less necessary than carbon dioxide.
A few things can remove that uncalled-for unhappiness. Falling in love can do it, but it's difficult to fall in love on demand, and at any rate it does not invariably give the desired results. Some people favor alcohol, pot, or even stronger drugs, but legal questions aside, that gets expensive.
But for those who want a simple approach to happiness, a little perspective can do wonderful things. Remember a few past problems, just for a moment, and then notice how much better life is now that they no longer affect you. Look at the future and borrow a little trouble: think of how much work you're going to have in late April and realize that you'll have to find a summer (or even a permanent) job. And then sit back with a slight sigh of contentment, because there's nothing you can do about it now.
It's Friday afternoon after the second week of classes. The status quo is not perfection, but at this particular moment it's treating you quite well. So for a few minutes, slowly, notice how good your life is. Not perfect, never perfect. But it could be worse.
Graphics by Eleanor Kung.
Copyright 1995, The Yale Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.
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