elation

We don’t talk about it much as if it were a mysterious disease or a taboo, maybe a little weird.

I asked my cat about it the other day. I thought she might know something but she just looked at me as if to say what a stupid question. I realized that I was on my own.

elated | əˈlādəd | adjective: ecstatically happy, exhilarated, delighted, overjoyed, joyous, gleeful, excited, animated, jubilant, beside oneself with happiness, exultant, euphoric, rapturous, enraptured, rapt; walking on air - the dictionary goes on and on - blissed out, over the moon. We have alot of words for it but we don’t use them. They’re rarely mentioned. They’re never in the news.

So how do you get elated or do you even want to be elated? Yes you do and I guess it’s like anything else - you try for it, ask for it. Experiment, explore, calibrate, notice what works. Don’t bother asking your cat.

Elation is not like a fort that you build out of logs, it’s more like a cloud. It can quickly disperse, be transmuted or transformed. Sometimes it simply disappears like a shy person at a party, blink and they’re gone.

Maybe it was never meant to stay.

I remember my initial encounter with elation, atleast that I can recall. I was in high school and . . . wait how could I be in high school if I was picking apples in the Fall? Maybe it was after high school . . . but then I was in college.

The chronology escapes me but I was picking apples in my friend’s apple orchard. It was up in Michigan. We had to get all the apples down out of the trees and into the barn before the first frost ruined them or they started to rot. I was out there, up in the apple trees all day, either on a ladder or reaching what I could from the ground. I remember that. When the (very large) bag slung across my shoulder was full I would climb down, dump it into a large wooden bin stationed near the tree and Clem, my friend’s father and the owner of the apple orchard, would come by and pick it up with his tractor and haul it off to the barn. Then I would move the ladder, climb back up and hunt for more apples. Me and the apple tree, all day long.

I remember the day we finished. No more apples to pick. I got paid and decided to walk home. It was 2 or 3 miles out in the country and I thought it would be fun. I was feeling good, mission accomplished, task completed, all the apples were safely in the barn.

As I walked down the road I was somehow overcome with the most beautiful feeling of freedom and joy. It was very simple and pure. I recognized it as the source of all happiness and all I ever really wanted or needed in my life. I wished for it to stay forever, then watched as it slowly dissipated and disappeared and become a memory and a description.

I wanted it to stay but it didn’t. It was transient, sort of effervescent by nature, like something that bubbles up from some hidden source and then just disappears.

That was a long time ago but I still remember. It’s like a marker was set in my life and I never forgot. Such a thing is possible, now I know that pure freedom and joy exists. What every child knows and forgets.

That’s why I get on my bike and ride, looking for adventure and whatever comes my way. That’s why I search, search search for that feeling. That’s why I end up at the cafe and the caffeine high and the computer buzz. That’s why I do everything essentially. That’s why we all do what we do if you get right down to it.

That’s why men and women get together. It’s complimentary. I think you know what I mean. Women speak in a higher range, men have more of a bass note. I noticed this the other day riding thru the park, passing a couple jogging while they had a conversation. Back and forth they went, musically It was so sweet. I was elated.

Music. Find your music.

Touching. A hug elicits empathy, elation.

Talking to a child does it for me.

Watching people move thru this sunlit cafe.

Not reading the stupid news is elationary or atleast preparatory for elationary.

Gestating in your mother’s womb is probably elationary or atleast pre-elationary. Maybe we don’t have enough circuits yet to feel full elation, maybe some kind of proto-elation.

I think really you have to be a grown person to feel proper elation. To have known how deeply tragic and sad this life can be and then to feel elation anyway. Heck a little kid doesn’t know any better, hasn’t experienced bitter defeat and humiliation but we surely have by the time we’re 30 or so. Puts it in stark contrast. Bracing. Shocking. Knowing that we hold both possibilities in our grasp is a terrible knowledge. It requires us to fully participate in our own life. There are no excuses.

Hmm. I guess that’s all I’ve got to say. That and a baby picture.

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