Gimme some explosive enthusiasm... Or don't

It has been about a week since my last boring personal essay, and I have decided to let go of “On...” as the sacred little doorway into every title.

Instead, I want to start writing and let the worst — and the best — fall off without any order.

Today I found myself thinking about enthusiasm. About the strange dichotomy between people who can still be violently happy about small things — the smiling idiot saying, “Dude, look at that cute little snail!” — and the other kind of person, the one who seems to have been born under a speech bubble that says, “Oh yes, the Roman Colosseum. I’ve been there a couple times. Kind of boring, if you ask me.”

Enthusiasm. What a word.

It once meant something close to being filled with the divine. Possessed by a god. Taken over by wonder.

So, reading this, my dear fellow readers, what are you thinking?

What does being connected to the divine actually look like?

Do you need to clap your hands in joy while imagining the simple, miraculous body of the snail working very hard to remain alive? Or can the person whose only reaction is “ew, snail,” followed by “maybe salt that motherfucker,” also be connected to the divine?

Are you imagining the first creature in our fictional split as an absolute stupid, and the second as a kind of bandit — someone who steals joy from the world and calls it intelligence?

I am laughing more than I should while writing this, because I am mentally watching a few sets of our idiots of the day, and I have an observation to share.

They tend to go crazy for each other.

Like, crazy.

Good crazy.

Love crazy.

Why?

Because, like any other social label, this too depends on context and company.

Some of my favorite pairs of humans — not necessarily couples, although some of them are — are made of one of these cynics walking around with their resting bitch face: serious, detached, obviously bored, except for the eyes and one arm.

One arm that one of our enthusiastic idiots is pulling toward something — and it can be anything — while saying, in a tone that is almost annoying:

“Looook at thaaaaaat.”

And the eyes of the cynic reflect one truth:

The enthusiasm the enthusiast finds in every little thing?

That connection to the divine?

For them, it has only one face.

And it is beautiful.

It is one of the most beautiful things in human nature.

There are people who find beauty and joy in extremely simple things, and they can transmit it like a radio signal. They change your mood just by looking at you.

And then there are people who keep most things inside.

We do not know what they carry in their inner world. We do not know what secret cathedrals, private jokes, dead gardens, tiny gods, or unsent letters live in there.

That is why I try to avoid calling people boring until I have had the time to talk to them and take a peek inside.

Boring is often just a diagnosis made from too far away.

“It takes all sorts to make a world” is one of those pieces of wisdom so deep, true, and universal that we hear it, nod, say, “Yeah, love this crap, keep it coming,” and never take the time to learn the name of the author.

So, whoever you were: sucks to be you. Sorry about the royalties.

The important part is that the bastard was right.

If we, as a whole, spent less time trying to separate ourselves into different, neatly stacked little boxes, and more time enjoying what is different and what is common, we would probably fight fewer wars.

Am I saying we should love the British?

Or, God forbid, the French?

Not necessarily.

Let us not become extremists. Haggis is a hate crime, and French snobbery is a category of sin all by itself.

What I am saying is this:

When you look at people only through their top-level category, you are almost guaranteed to lose some amazing humans.

Actually, most of them.

Even if they look kind of snobbish and boring from afar.

Especially so.

We are all the same in the important ways. We are alive. We are content sometimes and afraid at others. We want closeness. We do not want pain. That remains true, regardless of how loudly, quietly, beautifully, or stupidly we show our emotions.

I will not insult my audience by telling them what to think of that.

Returning to enthusiasm, even the Bible gives us the image of the divine not only in fire, thunder, or earthquakes, but in the quiet breeze. In the small voice. In the thing you almost miss.

So do not discriminate.

A snail. A cathedral. A person. A laugh. A hand pulling your arm toward something ridiculous.

Look.

Except the fucking French.

What the hell is a nuclear warning shot, my friends?

Peace.