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What is it the slightly older people want from the slightly younger people? They want credit for having survived so long, and often imaginatively, under difficult conditions.
You should know that when a husband and wife fight, it may seem to be about money or sex or power. But what they’re really yelling at each other about is loneliness. What they’re really saying is, “You’re not enough people.”
Nowadays, most of us when we marry get just one person—and, oh sure, maybe a few scruffy in-laws, ready to kill each other, and living hundreds of miles away, if you’re lucky—in someplace like Vancouver, British Columbia, or Hollywood, Florida.
And don’t try to make yourself an extended family out of ghosts on the Internet. Get yourself a Harley and join the Hell’s Angels instead.
But about my Uncle Alex, who is up in Heaven now. One of the things he found objectionable about human beings was that they so rarely noticed it when they were happy. He himself did his best to acknowledge it when times were sweet. We could be drinking lemonade in the shade of an apple tree in the summertime, and Uncle Alex would interrupt the conversation to say, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”
So I hope that you will do the same for the rest of your lives. When things are going sweetly and peacefully, please pause a moment, and then say out loud, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”
Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: “Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.” So I pass that on to you. Write it down, and put it in your computer, so you can forget it.
But, when you stop to think about it, only a nutcase would want to be a human being, if he or she had a choice. Such treacherous, untrustworthy, lying, and greedy animals we are!
The French Algerian writer Albert Camus, who won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, wrote that “there is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” So there’s another barrel of laughs from literature. Camus himself died in an automobile accident. His dates? 1913 to 1960 AD.
Listen: All great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human being: Moby-Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, The Iliad and The Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, the Bible, and The Charge of the Light Brigade.
But I’ll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver’s license! Look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut. I’m what a car is now. I’m a hundred horsepower now, which is eleven hundred manpower, so don’t mess with me. Hiya, Babe, you want a lift somewhere?
But hey, listen: I got a letter from a sappy woman a while back. She knew I was sappy, too, a Franklin Roosevelt Democrat, a friend of the working stiffs. She was about to have a baby, not mine. She wanted to know if it was a mistake to bring an innocent little baby into a world as awful as this one is. I told her that what made life almost worth living for me was the saints I met. These were people who behaved compassionately and capably, no matter what, and they could be anywhere.
Some of you won’t stay home. But please don’t forget where you came from. I never did. Notice when you’re happy, and know when you’ve got enough. As for throwing money at problems: that’s what money is for.
And, again, there’s going to be a lot of happiness. Don’t forget to notice!
“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories.”
“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
“Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”
