Titled 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' it contained the simplest (and funniest) of messages to his "little children." Here is one of my favorite parts:
"Ain't got no cash, ain't got no style, ain't got no girl to make you smile, but don't worry, be happy. 'Cause when you worry your face will frown and that will bring everybody down, so don't worry, be happy now...!"
So, EXCUUUUUUUUSE me for yesterday's frown and bringing at least one "person down" with my contemplative piece, "Looking Back." I was told that it was "too morbid" and so I have returned with a HAPPY face, sun shining brightly....just HAP-HAP-HAPPY as can be! (Puke.)
I don't know why certain people have such a problem with a 'face that frowns.' Is it even possible that everybody can be happy all the time? Unless they have manic-manic disorder, in which case we're in the same crowded lifeboat, just at opposite ends.
So many people feel things but, as Henry David Thoreau observed, "most men [people] live lives of quiet desperation." And after a lifetime of being quietly desperate, I now choose to write about whatever happens to be going on at the moment, good, bad, and everything in between. No big deal. Because that, my friends, is called LIFE, the good, the bad, the ugly, the increasingly insane world in which we live, and if you can exist without reacting to it all, then you are either missing a gene, or one whole color of the rainbow of life.
I always think of the brilliant juxtaposition of scene and song in "Good Morning Vietnam." Hearing Louis Armstrong sing "I see trees of green, red roses too, I see them bloom for me and for you, and I think to myself what a wonderful world" while simultaneously watching NAPALM being dropped on Vietnamese villages...one of the most profoundly shocking realities to absorb.
The good, the bad, the ugly, it's all out there, and if I sometimes lose my way and give in to feeling sad,I think I have not only the right, but good reason too. If it brings you down, you can always follow the advice I received from a Chinese fortune cookie: "When life brings you to your knees, stay there and pray." Or you can simply choose not to read
Getting back to Bobby McFerrin's words..."ain't got no cash, ain't got no style, ain't got no [man] to make me smile..."
At this point in my life, just the cash would be more than sufficient to keep me smiling from ear to ear until the day I drop dead. Oops! There I go, being morbid again...
