A Walk from Conference Room to Cube
Yesterday, on the way back from a meeting, padding softly through the sepulchral hush of late-afternoon office corridors, Jasper and I discussed the nature of happiness.
“My ass is killing me,” I said.
“You have a homicidal ass,” agreed Jasper. “But, then again, I’d want to kill you too if you sat on me all day.”
“Yeah, but that’s its job. My ass’s job is to be sat on by me.”
“I’m not disagreeing. An ass is to be sat on. But it’s a question of degree. I’m merely suggesting that the amount of time you spend sitting on it is, perhaps, excessive.”
We walked.
“God damn it,” I said, shifting my bag onto my other shoulder, “I hate meetings in the other building. It takes forever to get back.”
“Define forever.”
“Forever is longer than immediately.”
“Ah. Then I agree.”
“Maybe,” I said, “it’s a question of perspective. I’m focusing on the destination: my cube, the place where I can finally transfer the weight of my burgeoning middle-aged body from my feet to my ass.”
“The place of middle-aged body-weight transference.”
“Right. But that’s bad for two reasons.” I count them off. “One: During the process of striving toward my cube, I’m anxious and unfulfilled because I haven’t yet reached it. Two: once I reach it, I’m anxious and unfulfilled because, as destinations go, my cube isn’t exactly Aruba.”
“Aruba isn’t exactly Aruba either,” said Japser.
I think about this for a minute. “You’re saying that no destination can be everything you hope it to be. That striving after any thing automatically renders that thing unstriveworthy.”
Jasper shrugged. “I’m just saying I don’t believe in Aruba.”
“It’s on the map, though.”
“So’s Greenland. Does that mean I should believe in Greenland?”
I think about this too. “Yes?”
“Well then,” said Jasper, who was clearly trying to confuse me into silence. “I guess I believe in Greenland.”
“But here’s the thing,” I said. “There is a point of view that says that this journey on which we have embarked, this interminable walk from the conference room to my cube, is the thing we should be enjoying. The destination is important only insofar as it is an endpoint; a thing that makes the journey possible.”
“Is there a contest for boring?” said Jasper. “Because if there is, you should totally enter.”
“So how to solve this problem? The ideal life is a series of journeys without destinations. But we’ve already established that there’s no such thing as destinationless journey. It’s like trying to draw a line between one point.”
“Seriously. Did you go to boring school?”
“I’m working my way through an existential crisis here, dude.”
“You could walk in circles.”
“True,” I said. “But I’d get tired of that eventually. I’d feel unfulfilled. You can’t play pacman forever.”
“You can if you have a short memory.”
“So you’re saying we should maintain the illusion of a destination. One that’s nonexistent, unreachable.”
“The illusion of progress.”
“Of purpose.”
“Of happiness.”
“So you’re saying that happiness is self-deception.”
“I’m not saying anything,” said Jasper, ducking into his office. “Oh look! A destination.” He sat down, and smiled. “I feel great.”
“You’re just saying that to ruin my theory.”
He put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes in mock bliss. “I’m self-deceiving myself into euphoria.”
“No you’re not.”
“Now I’m self-deceiving myself that you’re not here.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“Now I’m enjoying my illusory and entirely self-deceptive belief that you’re gone, because I don’t have to listen to you babbling anymore.”
I left him, and walked to my cube, and then past my cube, and then back to the conference room, and then back to my cube. I did this three more times, extending the journey. Then I went in the cube and sat down. My walls towered over me in beige silence. My monitor blinked into life. My mail spilled onto the screen.
My ass twinged, and sent a bolt of pain up my back. It doesn’t like destinations either.
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