It’s difficult to contemplate paradise when it has been raining for a week straight. The obvious option would be a place sunny and warm, but then again, where I live it is sunny and warm 365 days a year. Or in this exceptional case, 358 days.
Sunny and warm would be a good beginning, so let’s start there.
A sunny and warm paradise itself sounds pretty good, but we’re talking about the real deal here. Paradise. I should want more out of my ultimate ideal. There must be more quantifiers. Sunny and warm just isn’t going to cut it.
Money would be nice. Lots of money. I think someone once said money can buy happiness.
Or was it that money cannot buy happiness? Let’s move on.
Okay. Warm and sunny. Money, and lots of it. What else?
I nearly forgot. Paradise to me would be living in total harmony with my girlfriend. We would never fight and we would just be happy together always. There would be so much love between the two of us that passers-by on the street would shield their eyes from our collective glow.
Oh yeah. I broke up with my girlfriend a while ago. We’re both better off for it. We still talk and she seems really happy now. I am too.
Okay. Scratch all that, except for the warm and sunny part. That still sounds pretty good. And the money. Yeah, paradise should have automated bank machines that spit money at me whenever I walk past.
Come to think of it, I don’t know what I would do with a ceaseless supply of money. I’d probably become a freak of some kind, building a wallaby zoo on my ranch compound or something.
You know, I get a sense of satisfaction from being able to spend within my earnings as it is now. I don’t feel any need for material things. I know that sounds disingenuous, but I don’t want a bigger car or a bigger house. All that big stuff would just block out that warm and shiny sun.
Forget the money.
So we’re back at sunny and warm.
Perhaps paradise is easier to define. I mean, I’d like it if the battery in my car wasn’t dead. I work two jobs, so I haven’t had time in the past few days to get a new one. The car just sits in my driveway, darkened taillights mocking me as I walk through the downpour in the morning to the bus stop. If only I could get some time off, I’d be able to buy that darned battery.
Maybe I can do that in paradise.
That’s just silly. My paradise is not going to be defined by my having the time to hoof it to AutoZone for a car battery. That would be just so…temporary.
No. Paradise should be more liberating than that. Paradise should be better than the comfiest sweater you ever owned and tastier that the best grilled cheese sandwich you ever had. Paradise is populated by your best friends and memories, and the potential to make even better friends and memories.
Maybe I’m just too foolish to realize that I am already in my own personal paradise. Maybe if the rain would stop, I’d know for sure.
Yet I think somehow I‘ll still be okay if the rain falls for the rest of my time here as long as otherwise things stay just as they are.
I can always buy an umbrella.