on wheelchairs and treadmills

I noticed him because he was ostensibly reading The New Yorker as he sat in his wheelchair at my "home office" coffee shop. It was The New Yorker that caught my eye, not the wheelchair. No, it was the combination of the two. For no rational reason, I felt it was an odd mix. That betrays a bias I had not recognized in me, the notion that someone so incapacitated is incapacitated in more ways than the obvious physical ways. In the back of my mind had I consigned him to only reading the Daily News? (I enjoy both periodicals.) "Incapacitated" seems like the wrong word, too harsh, too confining. Maybe paracapacitated or quasicapacitated.  

I began to notice he was a regular, always reading, almost always smiling, conversing with other denizens of the hangout. 

One day, I walked up to him and said, "I see you're a New Yorker reader, too. It's my breakfast companion."

"Isn't it great?"

"It is."

I referred to a recent issue that grabbed me, one of those epic examples that you want to save, even in a digital world. I can't remember for sure why I felt that or what issue it was or what was in it. It may have been the Rachel Kushner profile. He later told me he read her latest novel.

The next time I introduced myself by name and got his name. 

Rupe. 

We got talking, easily. I sat beside him.

He has a doctorate in education from Columbia. Taught science. He suffered a bicycle accident in Central Park last year. He has amnesia of the tragedy. It was a hit and run. Cameras couldn't make out the license plate number. Millions of dollars in medical expenses. He is from Guyana. Up here in Syracuse to be with his family, or them with him. Compression fractures in his upper spine. Might possibly walk some day. Can't do any more physical therapy this year because he reached his limit of twenty visits, and it's just June.

"But you're always smiling. You seem genuinely happy."

"What are you going to do? What can I do?"

"I could understand if you were bitter."

He explained how he indulged in bitterness at first and sometimes now, but determined it hurt no one but himself and those around him. He said he has to make the best of it and might as well do so without adding the burden of mental and spiritual misery.

I'm paraphrasing. 

I mentioned to Rupe, roughly and approximately, what Daniel Gilbert said in "Stumbling on Happiness." Gilbert cited a 1978 study that said, pretty much, a paraplegic and a lottery winner were equally, though not quite, as happy or unhappy, a year after the life-changing event. He spoke of this in a TED talk in 2004 and then made some corrections ten years later.  

"So, are you happy?"

Rupe smiled. A genuinely bright and infectious smile.

I felt foolish asking the question and slightly ashamed for not being, well, happier myself.

"Is it simply a gift you are open to?" I persisted.

Rupe repeated the "what are you going to do" theory, and talked about his family.

Or else I don't recall how else he explained his happiness. I'm remembering this poorly, skewed by time and the prejudice of my own perspectives.

After that encounter, I went back to see if I accurately remembered the Daniel Gilbert thing about a year after someone won the lottery or lost the use of limbs. Pretty much remembered correctly.

Then, the internet being what it is, along with my discursive mind, I wandered off into such matters as "hedonic adaptation" and the "hedonic treadmill."

Hedonic treadmill. The rat race, right? Scientists study prisoners, widows, married or divorced people, and, yes, those with severe spinal injuries.

We're never satisfied. We get more and then want more. 

Ancient concepts. In 1621, in "Anatomy of Melancholy," Robert Burton wrote, "Desire hath no rest, is infinite in itself, endless, and as one calls it, a perpetual rack, or horse-mill.^"

Abundance denial. A since-deceased mentor of mine would often say, "If I have enough, I have abundance."

I love these terms.

Great book or poem titles. Or band names.

I too tread my own treadmill, sometimes I trudge it. Only rarely do I jump off it. Maybe it's going too fast and I wonder where it will fling me.

What would Rupe do?

WWRD.