WANTED: Happiness, dead or alive
Alex is back with a brand new invention (an essay)
With all due respect, what's up fuckers?
It’s been a minute and then some. I have, for all intensive [sic] purposes, changed. They say baby makes three, well, two babies makes you wanna flee AM I RIGHT FELLAS???
In all seriousness, I think there's a curse on me.
It started like all great stories do, at the UPS store.
No, that's not true - the UPS store came second. First, I went to an Amazon returns warehouse that also happens to sell expensive foodstuffs, known locally as Whole Foods.
Walking in, I was, as always, drawn toward a bright yellow signs for a Sale! only to be let down when seeing that I, a dearly beloved Amazon Prime member, got $0.04 off of raspberries.
Is Bezos happy? I can’t imagine so. I can’t imagine so, cuz if he is he’d probably just stop. Take a break. Give the money away and nap a while. Sad people nap too, god willing, but they never follow it up by buying the washington post.
At the customer service desk, I presented three items for return:
Newborn Easy Start Anti-Colic 4.5-Ounce Bottle with Pacifier Set, Teddy Bear, 0-2 Months, transparent, 2 Piece Set
2-in-1 Postpartum Pads, Absorbent Perineal Ice Maxi Pads, Instant Cold Therapy Packs and Maternity Pad in One
Lounger Cover Compatible with Snuggle Me Loungers - Soft & Skin-Friendly Cotton - Replacement Cover ONLY – Brown
The woman scanned each QR code with a reckless abandon and looked nary a once at the packages for each. Here, in Bezos country, it did not matter what you returned or bought, for all was Prime and Prime was Good.
“All set.”
“Nice,” I said, and sauntered my ass to WFM Coffee & Juice bar, the chic coffee shop they'd also built inside of the Amazon Return Warehouse called Whole Foods.
I never get a cookie but today I was like fuck it, let's get a couple o’ cookies, so I got my cookies and my coffee and walked through the ARWcWF parking lot and across the street to the UPS store for one final return - also purchased via Amazon – an Original Baby K'tan Baby Carrier: #1 Easy Pre-Wrapped, Soft, Slip-On, No Rings, No Buckles | 5 in 1 Baby Sling Gift | The Best Hands Free Infant Wrap For Newborn to Toddler up to 35lb (See Size Chart).
this return was different
For this return, I had to ‘print’ a shipping label ahead of time and hand it over to the UPS store employee.
Fear not, friends, for I do myself own a printer. And sure it may print a chunky black line of ink across each page, but it did print nonetheless. So I printed that label and brought it with me for the closing set of my returnapalooza.
Except here, in front of the goatee’d man wearing a red sweatshirt that did not seem like it was UPS official, I could not find the paper.
"I don't have the printed paper for this," I told him with the "everything’s gonna be juuuuust fine" confidence of a sixty-year-old silver fox getting carded at a Ralph’s when buying a sixer of Peroni’s.
Goatee winced. Winced.
"Ah man, we need the paper."
What?
"What?"
Still wincing, mid-wince, he said, "yea, we can't do it without the paper."
No wonder Amazon runs the world, I thought, cursing Baba Bezos.
"Do you have a few minutes?" he then asked like he was about to pitch me a timeshare.
"Yea..." I said.
"If you want, you can email me a copy of the return slip and I can print it out.”
“Yea sure.”
“We charge fifty cents and our internet is slow so it'll take a few minutes for the email to come through."
What in the United Parcel Service is this? We have to wait 5 minutes for my email to get to you? Hey, while we're waiting, let's fire up Netscape on the 28k modem and search "coolest cars" and "hot woman boob."
But much to the chagrin of all present, I responded with an effortless “No worries."
He presented a laminated piece of paper worn down and frayed from great use. On it, the store's email address. Goatee and his team were clearly sharing this email address a lot.
But I meant what I'd said - it really was no worries. Given that my whole brand is "always worried," this was strange.
Like a caveman of the 1990s, I send a screenshot of the QR code to ups2842@ups.com.
"Ok cool I'll go check," Goatee said, "but it'll be a few minutes."
No prob, I tell him, and I start browsing. It's mostly stuff you'd expect – markers, ,envelopes, sharpies, highlighters, and – what the heck is this?
I saw one of these bracelets, which normally I’d judge as some real commodified spirituality bullshit trend that employs a “tell the customer exactly what they’ll feel if they use this product” tactic, e.g. calm magnesium supplements and focus Charmin TP (coming soon.)
But maybe it really is as the great prophet Swift foretold, “I’m the problem - it’s me." Maybe my dismissal of all things woo as simply capitalist claptrap was, in fact, claptrapping me into the big sad salad of my life?
I spun the rotating spinny thing - here was the PROTECTION BALANCE and there was EMPOWERMENT WISDOM, but the black of the POWER SUCCESS one called to me.
I put it on and immediately felt the ‘making a deal with the devil pit of your stomach this is a bad mistake but I can't help myself’ feeling.
I took it off. I wanted success, sure, but not like this. This was too thirsty, too...direct.
"Hey I got your email," Goatee said, looking even more crushed than before, "but there's no attachment in it."
And that's what happens when you let go of the success bracelet.
run it back
"I'll resend it," I told him, and I did, this time with an actual photo.
"Ok it'll be another minute; it's super slow," he said, mostly to himself.
I put on the HAPPINESS STRENGTH bracelet. Here's what it said:
Color me interested!!
Gone was my usual cynicism-laden negativity and in its place something new, that thing with feathers I’m talking of course about hope.
I put it on and looked at my hand and it looked...weird? Like I was an eighth grader coming back from his family trip to Acapulco, but a small price to pay!
I wondered if perhaps my believing that this thing would make me happy would, indeed, make me happy. Like The Secret but not a cult. Manifestation, some call it, though that sounds a bit too much like man infestation am I right ladies?!
"Got your email," goatee said, right on cue. "I'm printing it out but the printer is slow." he said to me, still angry but allowing me into his confidence.
“All good,” I said, my bracelet clearly working. I paid goatee his 50 cents for the print job and 14 bucks for lifelong happiness and walked out of there like the king of a snowy sweden.
Arriving home, munching on another cookie, I grabbed the groceries from Whole Foods from the passenger side window when a piece of paper floated out onto the dirt part of the driveway where I park my car. Ha! It was there the whole time. Is this part important? I doubt it!
So did the bracelet work? Skeptics scream no way, of course not you dumb idiot something can't just change reality like that. That's what Adam Grant recently wrote in his newsletter about horoscopes being bullshit. That's rich, by the way, coming from the guy who coined the term "invisible hand" to explain the free market even though that term sounds a lot more like it describes a masturbation technique am I right ladies AND fellas AND theydees????
I disagree with Grant's central idea.
Horoscopes may not work in a way that specific scientific experiments can 'prove' but you know who else no one can prove? God, and that guy is famous as hell!
People believe in the things they cannot prove precisely because they cannot prove them, e.g. love and loch ness monsters.
We find meaning by deciding to do so. Tarot cards are a great example - when you do a reading, there is meaning in the cards because you find meaning in the cards - isn't that more than enough to make it 'real'?? (go read
‘s amazing ).Grant brings up the classic example of how everyone will see themselves in the same horoscope if you tell them it's for their specific sign. The Barnum effect they call it, for that circus guy. But what does that prove beyond the fact that we're all pretty similar in the end? That we all feel scared about death and have big dreams and are loyal to a fault. If you asked each person what specifically that horoscope meant to them, you'd get a million different answers. Variations on a theme, as my friends in the orchestra like to say.
That’s like saying “everyone who connects with the lyrics of a love song is an idiot because they’re all the same they’re all about love.” Come on, guy, get real would ya?
the fall
That night while putting Wilder to bed, the bracelet broke. I screamed "shit" and watched my life flash before me as the beads clattered onto the floor like bingo balls released from their cage. I tried retrieving them but Wilder screamed DAD and I had to go in so he could “go on my tummy” which means exactly what you think it does, him laying on his stomach and me saying good night.
Back near the couch, most of the beads were gone and with them my last shot at transforming depression and stress into optimism and strength. But no I wasn’t going to fall this easy I stuck my hands into the armpit of the couch cushions and fished my wish there were a bunch of beads there. I gathered most of them and placed them into a mostly used candle for safe keeping.
A few sad sack salad days later, I put the bracelet back together. It was hard! The string was tattered and frayed and I couldn't get any of the beads through it. Perhaps this was happiness - something to work for, something to earn. Yes.
After like 30 minutes I managed to put the bracelet back together. I was back.
It fell off 15 minutes later. I put the beads back in the mostly used candle. That was a month and a half ago, and I haven't touched them since.
Have I been less happy? Less happy than what?
Happiness is a a fickle flirt.
If hope is the thing with feathers, then sadness is the thing that tethers right onto you and all you know, it is that which weathers all storms like a buoy out at sea. And happiness? Well that is the thing in leather, that cool kid that everyone wants to be friends with until you get close to him and you’re like ‘is this it?? this guy sorta sucks.’
It's always all there.
There's believing in the power of the bracelet or thinking it's all bullshit. There's looking up the company behind the bracelets, which I did, and finding a mother daughter team based out of LA which seems to have zero connection to the culture or ideas that they're selling products about. Usually that'd make me madder than a hatter, but there's also giving a benefit to the doubt and saying maybe these women aren't so bad. There’s also the very good chance that they’re monsters!
How did we get here in this essay, I have no idea. I just wanted to tell the lil UPS story but now we're here.
It’s there and we’re here and I am cursed. Cursed to feel happy some of the time and unhappy the rest, yes, but more so cursed to know that I could be feeling something other than what I’m feeling now.
Has happiness, then, become whatever state one does not currently feel? A perpetual “better than this’ness” that robs the present of its heft by trading it in for a future that can never come? I find myself often mourning the loss of a moment I’m still experiencing, sad because it will soon end the way everything does.
In the end, everything gets returned. Eternal return Neetchie said, and that guy was sad as hell. We experience things but they’re not good enough so we return them.
Sometimes we suggest buying something just to use once and then return but then sometimes our wife says, “no Alex you cannot buy a gas powered generator, use it for this film shoot, and then return it that is not how the world works.”
Sometimes we are happy when we do not notice all that there is to be unhappy about. Not because it isn't there - it always is - but because something else takes its place - the printer breaks and the wifi is 28.8k dialup and we get a few moments to look at the bracelets that promise the very things we’re experiencing right then and there, here, now. Briefly, sure, but enough.
be my success bracelet and consider becoming a supporting BAThead
comments
are you happy? what does that even mean?
been a minute I’ve been gone but I’m back how the hell is everyone how are YOU? Lotta new people here too so if that’s you come say hi in the comments idk
what did you search for when using 28k dial up?
what do you make of adam grant and his ‘horoscopes are bullshit’ argument?
how often do you return stuff? is it wrong to buy a gas powered generator use it once and then return it?
love yall happy to be back
Ahhh the mostly used candle as vessel for junk that’s too precious for the junk drawer (which is every drawer in our house). That candle is why all my quarters, hair clips and questionably empty metro cards have a slightly gummy feel and the scent of an ocean breeze.
Adam Grant sounds like a bummer. Even if he's right (not saying he is tho), its lame to call fun things bullshit. Because they're FUN, Adam. Because they give us special satisfied brain chemicals without hurting anyone and isn't that good enough for you!?? He needs to get his special brain chemicals without inflating his own know it all ego.