SEPTEMBER 17, 2026 – Yesterday I experienced two especially memorable conversations, one in the morning with a local friend and the other in the evening with a distant comrade. They were radically contrasting exchanges; one disturbing, the other calming. The two friends are years my senior. One was a sailor stationed aboard an American Navy vessel in the South China during the Vietnam War. The other was a rabble-rousing demonstrator against that war. As of yesterday, the veteran was deeply pessimistic about the survivability of our Republic. The former protester, on the other hand, counseled resistance to despair. Both friends are exceptionally well informed about the world. Despite his pessimism, the former sailor has a good sense of humor, at least, about our collective plight. My other friend has a good sense of zen about the world but laughs very little about it.
The negative (yet more humorous) conversation opened my eyes and mind to the very real and hostile forces afoot beyond the sunshine in our neighborhood. The “zen exchange” lowered my blood pressure and gave me useful perspective on our time and place—and perhaps purpose—in a universe too vast for our still-evolving minds to grasp. Moreover, this latter conversation made me grateful for another day of my “human beingness” as it has evolved through uncountable combinations and permutations since the mother of all carbon atoms gave birth to life on earth. But I’d found happiness before the “zen conversation” and not because it.
The happiness achieved in my earlier unorganized pursuit of it (despite the day’s dose of political reality) had occurred late yesterday afternoon close to home—a gorgeous late-summer day on our back porch. Seated on a small sofa at one end of the porch was our oldest—but not so old—granddaughter, Illiana, focused on her usual pursuit of happiness (drawing) to the accompaniment of her own sweetly melodious humming. I resisted the temptation to break her cadence by commenting (again) on how much her grandma and I enjoy hearing Illiana “make her own music.” I, meanwhile, took a chair at the table at the opposite end of the porch to paint another home-made model sailboat. To keep the paint-tipped brush inside the lines, I had to hold my breath. For musical accompaniment of this task, I was compelled to rely on Illiana, which was just as well.
I allowed my thoughts to wander outside the lines that confined the paintbrush. I quietly reveled in the larger scene, the painting that Illiana and I had created for ourselves.
For her the interactive painting was doubtless a passing occasion, a memory with fast-fading colors, yet leaving an impression deep inside her somewhere, which, when mingled with other memories and brought to the fore by some future random catalyst, will bring new color to light.
This possibility brought me satisfaction—and assurance that despite my lack of control over much of anything in life, I have the capacity for happiness. Not just the pursuit of it or but happiness itself, and without use of harmful external inducements; just the accommodating conditions of earth and sun and simple surroundings. The more my thoughts encircled this recognition the more I appreciated my immediate circumstances. Illiana and I weren’t inside some Japanese Buddhist temple surrounded by aromatic incense, the gurgling sound of a nearby fountain, afternoon sunrays trickling through the foliage of a Buddhist pine, and a breathtaking view of some distant snow-draped volcanic peak skirted by a forest mist. We were seated comfortably on the back porch of an urban American dwelling; a hanging plant in a corner; more greenery cultivated and thoughtfully arranged by Illiana’s grandmother and resting on a plant stand here and a low table there; an occasional alleyway passage by one neighbor or another; the lush maple outside stirring in summer’s waning breath; welcome honey bees buzzing lightly among the garden blossoms on the other side of the porch screens; a few high wispy clouds under a deeply confident blue sky.
Here and now all’s right with the world, I thought. And in the moment, isn’t that enough?
In time, Beth pulled into the driveway after a day of book-buying.
“Hello!” said Illiana.
Soon the two were seated together, like peas in a pod, as they reviewed Illiana’s latest drawings. With a smile I resumed work on my sailboat, which by this time had sailed well beyond the storm clouds of my earlier unsettling conversation with the former sailor. The model vessel was on a metaphorical course that would lead to my later conversation—my “zen exchange” that would capture the essence of my “back porch painting.”
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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
