Of course you're all busy. But here's a quick test for you anyway....
How can a 21stC American adult measure happiness? I realize that's an imperfect question to a perfectly immeasurable inquiry, but bear with me a moment.
In scanning today's news, literature, and screens, I submit there is one recurring answer. Happiness has something to do with a creative combination of the following: Power...Wealth...Beauty...Military/Political/Corporate Status. Name a headline or a storyline or a songline that doesn't say this!
OK, now meet 13-year-old Aaron Gyllenhaal who lives near where I grew up on the westside of Chicago: Columbus Park. Leafy, lovely, green Columbus Park is one of the last to have been created in Chicago's splendid panoply of public parks. Now, every year, Aaron does what I used to do. Count the White-Fronted Geese that use this turf- grass habitat as a stopover snack bar on their way between Central America and the Arctic Circle.
Aaron and I don't know each other, but over an 80-year period we somehow have shared the very same tiny green happiness from tracking these magnificent heather-colored birds. He knows all about them, because he's part of the Audubon Conservatory Sanctuary Program out there. In my time, I didn't have access to such data. And yet, I'm sitting here imagining our uncelebrated happiness-quotient strolling Columbus Park was (and is) higher than any that will be reached by the world's rich-and-famous.
Big unsubstantiated boast, you say...? Well, just go ahead and see how many of the rich-and-famous know anything about White-Fronted Geese families chomping across the green green grasses of our Columbus Park...!
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