People & Happiness

[Originally Posted 1/20/07]
My personal opinion (never a good start) is that people as a species are born unaware of how to enjoy life. Only via rare miracles – sometimes involving religion (the birth of one, not the adoption of an existing one), sometimes involving philosophy, sometimes involving drugs – are people able to maintain this state as their personal norm.

Rather than attempt to logically back that argument, I'll tell a suspicious story.

The small city where I live is home to a growing number of Asian immigrants. Many of them are first generation, and they have tastes for things they are used to from back in their former homes. That means my town has formed up a specialty grocery store that caters to these special tastes. I love that grocery store.

One time when I was shopping there, I came upon a product labeled as "Corn Candy." This was a new concept for me. I have heard of candy corn, but that was clearly not the product being offered. In the clear bag, small translucent yellow candies sparkled at me through their thin sugar coatings. They looked like "Sour Patch Kid" versions of the baby corn stalks that make their way into some Chinese food dishes. Out of sheer curiosity, I knew I must have them. So I bought the smallest size bag they had (a trifling 1.0 kilograms) for the extreme, luxury goods price of $1.50.

Shuddering at the crippling expense, I carried the tiny bushel home with me. I opened it on my kitchen counter and tried one. It was ok. It tasted like a weak version of the "buttered popcorn" Jelly Belly jelly beans. I had another. It was also ok. I had about 10 that afternoon, then felt that I had enjoyed enough sugared pleasure from the bag of roughly 400 pieces. My aversion to senseless waste prevented me from attempting to stuff the bag of candy into my trash can. Instead, I wedged it into my backpack and took it to work the next day.

At work, I emptied the bag into a large bowl in the break room, pulled out a marker, and labeled a "C-Fold" paper towel to read, "Corn Candy! Enjoy!" and walked away.

One day later, I was again at work when one of the chemists approached me with a big grin on his face. He told me that the corn candy I had left in the break room had been a source of universal displeasure at lunch the previous day. People expressed loud, violent opinions that a highly sweetened corn flavor should not be turned into a gummy candy and provided as a treat. (Ok, that's not exactly what they were reported to have said.) The large bowl of such candies was the source of a public outcry. Many people had sampled a piece for the sole reason of wanting to become aware of the extreme degree to which their sense of taste was in jeopardy.

As the Chemist and I talked, I was on my way to the lunchroom with my empty mug. As I poured hot water into it for my morning fix (weak green tea), I glanced up at what I assumed would be a still-toweringly-full, precariously-heaped bowl of corn candy. But it was not in danger of falling all over the place. In fact, it was half empty. The chemist gave me a funny look and said, "That's odd." Within another 6 hours the bowl was empty.

No one ever spoke of the corn candy again.

I asked around about it over the next few days. Only two shifts (about 20 people) had been in over the course of this story. We'll estimate that there were 400 candies at the start. Everyone I spoke to told me that they had tried exactly one candy, thought it was an abomination just like everybody else, and then noticed that the bowl was mysteriously steadily emptying. No one would admit to being the person who put the bowl away afterwards and threw away the note, effectively removing all trace of the corn candies from history.


To this day, I regret having made half my department unhappy by strewing the lunchroom counter (the bowl on it) with free candy. I am truly thankful that only half of my coworkers were ever exposed to the offending gustatory nightmare due to its merciful disappearance.

What I can be pleased about, to refer back to the original topic, is the fact that I know I made several people happy, just for a little while.

I take great comfort in knowing that the half of the crew that was not forced to sample the horrible candies will be forever delighted that fate spared them that trial. It is not possible to spread that joy onto the injured crews. I am still searching for a way to make the first crews happy again, as a way of atonement. So far, I've got nothing.

That makes me confident that it is very rare indeed to find a person who knows how to be happy.