Wild happiness

When the world melts down

Today’s accompanying tune: “Pumpin Blood” by NONONO

You deserve wild happiness.

That is what my astrology app declared as I sat among thousands of stranded passengers at San Francisco International Airport on Friday amid a global IT meltdown that grounded planes, halted banking, and rendered Starbucks’ order ahead feature utterly useless. Things felt wild, alright, but probably not how Co-Star intended.

When I think of wild, I think of alpine lakes, four-legged megafauna, rolling storms that come alive each afternoon. I think of wildflowers’ unimpeded growth along the hills, painting the high country in yellows, purples, and oranges. I think of the sloughing off of my own humanity, the trappings of society slowly falling the longer I am in the backcountry. I think of the rhythms of life, the rhythms of the planet, that I abide by when I’m away from my phone, away from the crumbling cesspool of the internet, away from other people and their trappings of expectation. Rising with the sun, basking in its warmth after a night under the stars and eavesdropping on the chorus of birds greeting the day. Hitting the trail as the sun rises, but returning well before it peaks to avoid the heady heat of the day and any storms that seek to cash in on its disturbance. A lazy afternoon, lounging by the lakes, ambling through the thoughts that have been catalogued inside my head, with enough leisure to admire those that serve little purpose but are nonetheless beautiful.

There is nothing more wild than the slow and the intentional. The deep resilience that comes with earning each day, a life built without excess, without distraction. A wild happiness, then, is a slow one, a build and ultimate plateau that coasts through life. A silent contentedness, the soft glow of the morning sun streaming through a streak-free window. A joy unimpeded by the built world, by human’s own desire to fully and wholly trample everything in their paths. Animalistic, as a compliment. The idea of wildness may be intractably linked to the idea of “Type 2 Fun,” a common phrase among outdoors people, runners, and other endurance athletes that spend hours suffering for the sake of a promised reprieve. Type 2 Fun is the kind of fun where you aren’t actually having fun in the moment — it might be downright painful, even — but once it’s over, once you’re back at the car or at home, it’s obvious how enjoyable it was even with everything that transpired. Wild happiness, then, is a Type 2 Happiness, one where it may not be apparent as it is happening, but in the vast retrospect of time, becomes obvious to even those most thoroughly in the pain cave.

Though, as most of my fellow travelers could attest this weekend, wild has evolved to mean something different, something nefarious or dangerous, something unknown yet ominous. A cascade of delays, hours spent in a temperature controlled building with thousands of other people. The unexpected is wild. The unpredictable? Wild.

“Isn’t this wild?” one passenger says to me as I search for a single empty seat in the terminal overflowing with other people. She’s not looking for a response, not really. She is merely thinking out loud, her inner monologue escaping the gates of her lips at the sight of people strung across the carpet, lined up in a queue spanning the length of the terminal, and then some, with small hopes of ending such a travel nightmare. They are wound up, angry, distraught. Missing vacations and grandchildren and weddings. It is not wild. It is chaos. Unorganized, loud, largely unhelpful. Lots of rebels with a singular cause that no one can fix. Some resigned to their earthly limbo en route to their destination, smiling and maintaining good spirits while the kinks in our human-made system work themselves out. They are the ones that know wild happiness.

Not to be confused with optimism or even delusion, wild happiness is content to seep through our cells and into our souls, creating a brightness where there was none. It is not wishful thinking, the idea that things will ultimately work out, but instead a resilience and reassurance that they will be okay even if things don’t work out, in the end. It is not a wholesale denial of the discomfort happening, but a knowledge that this particular discomfort is ultimately temporary, even if there are cascading effects. That is wild happiness. And amid a global internet meltdown, it is a recognition that we have handed over the reins of our lives, our societies, to a handful of fault-prone systems and feeling empowered to do more, to change, instead of feeling resigned to the helplessness of inconvenience.

I use the word “wild” often to describe things that inspire awe. A family of quail wandering through our yard in search of our strategically placed watering stations is wild. A sunrise painting distant peaks a firey orange is wild. A field of lupine so dense that the hillside itself appears draped in royal robes? Wild. A life without the trappings of excess, without the smart refrigerator and internet-connected pet food dispenser, is one so full of awe it threatens to burst. Threatens to overwhelm with goodness, with feeling. With happiness.

I’m eager for a life of wild happiness, one that tints the hues of the world just golden enough to glow, but not enough to alter the view. One that seeks steadiness in times of upheaval or calm in moments of anxiety. I wouldn’t dare say I am there yet — I know better than that — but knowing I deserve it, that it is something we all deserve, is enough to make me want to try. A life of wild happiness is a tool of resistance in this world we have built and are seemingly intent on burning to the ground. A cool head prevails, but a wild head enjoys.

Here’s to your own wild happiness, in all its lives.

- Megan