How Am I? Don't Ask!

I remember reading somewhere that in cultures where there is no word for stuttering, people don't stutter.  Please don't run and google this statistic.  It doesn't matter if my memory is totally flawed.  What matters is the idea that if you don't apply the label, the condition might not exist.  For those factoid wonks who demand accuracy, I'll re-pose my theory in the form of a familiar philosophical query: If a tree falls in the forest and nobody asks if it made a sound, would the tree even know it fell? (I didn't say it would be a great philosophical query.)

That's what I'm wondering these days as I make my way through the quotidian morass of paperwork, drudgery of homemaking, stress of our declining economy and fact of my advancing age.  If I never asked myself "Am I happy?" would I ever doubt that I was? 

Another aphorism I've heard, but can't remember where, claims that "nothing is work unless you'd rather be doing something else."  This philosophy can readily be applied to all sorts of undesireable situations: Fifty is great as long as you wouldn't rather be forty.  Cooked beets are tasty unless you think of chocolate cake.  Your spouse is gorgeous as long as you don't look at Brangelina.  Ergo, I am happy until I compare my mental state to, oh, the way I felt on my wedding day, when I was thirty-five, was literally forced to eat cake and slept with a man who could give Brad Pitt a run for his hearthrob money.

So yes, these days I find it helpful to walk through my duties with mental blinders on and caution tape around my brain's pleasure centers.  Nothing to see over here, just keep walking.  My motivational catchphrase is much more in line with the Nike slogan, "Just do it."  (However I might preface that with "You don't have to like it.")

So, how am I?  Who cares?  It's enough that I simply "am."

In conclusion, I would like to lay to rest one final pithy adage.  With apologies to Socrates, the unexamined life might actually have something going for it.