While driving from Livermore, CA to Klamath Falls, OR today, I started musing about how great experiences like the ones I’ve enjoyed lately both humble you, putting you in your very small place in the scheme of things – and make you feel like the luckiest kid in the world. That train of thought instantly reminded me of something Kurt Vonnegut said in an interview with the Weekly Guardian (1991):
Q: What is your idea of perfect Happiness?
A: Imaging that something somewhere wants us to like it here.
And then also, later in the same interview:
Q: When and where were you happiest?
A: About ten years ago my Finnish publisher took me to a little inn on the edge of the permafrost in his country. We took a walk and found frozen ripe blueberries on bushes. We thawed them in our mouths. It was as though something somewhere wanted us to like it here.
I have definitely been feeling like something somewhere wants me to like it here lately!
That thought led me right to John Green’s angle in The Fault in Our Stars (the last book I read):
‘”I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased toward consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed.“‘
It pleases me to combine these thoughts and let a fair exchange start happening. Something somewhere wants me to like it here, while I am eager and willing to notice and observe the elegance of the universe!
Here are a few things from my last days in CA that I thought the universe was especially wanting me to notice:
I arrived in the state of OR this evening, although I won’t go to my final destination until Sunday. I have been in motion for nearly a month straight, and I find that I am very much looking forward to remaining in one area for awhile. I’ll be in OR for at least 3 months, then it remains to be seen what the universe has in mind for me to notice next!
what we have here is a failure to communicate 
awesome … 😀
By: Ashok1288 on March 7, 2012
at 2:42 am
I made my travel plans for Arcata CA and red-wood country yesterday. I will be there in April, driving up from San Francisco and back, sort of on my way to St. Augustine FL. 🙂
Eventually I got to the point where I could not deny that the “something somewhere that wants me to like it here” already has a name and a history, and is, in fact, a someone…a person who inspires not only “consciousness” and “like” but “love.” When you become conscious, the only appropriate response to the universe is love. Or that’s what I am compelled to think (and believe) by all that I have noticed. 😉
By: Stephen Ingraham on March 7, 2012
at 6:23 am
Wait, how is Arcata, CA in any way on your way to FL? 🙂
“When you become conscious, the only appropriate response to the universe is love.” – nicely put!
By: tuulenhaiven on March 7, 2012
at 11:56 pm
I like the quotes a lot. A nice way of thinking. The photos are beautiful as well. Looks like you have a spring/winter mix.
By: Caroline on March 7, 2012
at 2:00 pm
Yes, it was very spring-like in parts of CA, but as I got back up in the mountains it reverted to winter. I was driving through places in OR today that had snow piled on the side of the road 5 ft high!
By: tuulenhaiven on March 7, 2012
at 11:58 pm