TIME magazine reported this week that the secret to living a
long life is all based on one thing: optimism. That’s right,
think positive thoughts and you can cure cancer, ward off heart
disease and even prevent arthritis.
But, like most things in life, there’s a catch. And this
time, the catch is a little thing called the “happy
gene.” For those individuals fortunate enough to have
inherited this amazing gene, apparently staying positive
isn’t necessarily always a challenge. It’s just
something that comes naturally.
But for the rest of us left out of this gifted gene pool,
we’re that much more vulnerable to bad news, rainy days and
Monday morning blues. And I must admit, the new year is off to a
start that is sure to shave more than just a few years off our
genetically inferior lives. They say bad news comes in threes. Lets
just hope that’s true.
First, just when you start thinking that all is OK with the
world and you’re sitting at the start of a beautiful new year
full of potential, someone has to go and get hit with a
tsunami.
I know it’s true that we as humans are at the mercy of the
weather. But I always felt confident knowing that we could handle a
storm, maybe even a hurricane now and then. So when a tsunami of
epic proportions washes away almost a third of the Asian continent,
it’s hard to look on the bright side.
Still, natural disasters are one thing. But it was when I was
hit with the second piece of bad news that things started to look
really bad. Storms are unexpected, but one thing I’ve always
thought I could rely on was history. History can’t change
““ it already happened. It’s in the past. It’s
done. That’s why it’s history.
Until I saw author CA Tripp’s book, “The Intimate
World of Abraham Lincoln,” in which he relates that someone
wasn’t so truthful about old Honest Abe’s sexual
preferences. That’s right! Abraham Lincoln was gay. Or at
least a little gay. Sure, he still had a wife and a family, but
according to Tripp, Lincoln also spent the night sleeping with one
of his bodyguards whenever Mary was away.
While Tripp acknowledges that the practice of men sleeping with
men was normal during the time (sleeping quarters were often
limited, apparently), it’s pretty clear from a brief glance
at the book that our $5 bill friend was engaged in a sexual
relationship for reasons more than just due to a shortage of beds.
We’ve all seen that tiny log cabin the 6-foot-5 Abe lived in.
You’ve got to really like a person to share one of those
little beds.
And just when I thought my world had already been turned upside
down, the third and most tragic bad news hit. This news was more
devastating than any off-shore tidal wave or sausage-smoking
president combined. This news managed to tear away at the fabric of
what I knew to be good and true: Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston are
calling it splits.
Yes, Hollywood’s perfect couple, after seven years of
marital bliss, is filing for a divorce.
But why? They seemed so good together. Sure, he was a little
creepy in “Fight Club,” and she’s far from being
the sexiest woman in Hollywood, but everyone has their flaws.
I always thought those two would stay together. Just look at
their wedding vows, in which Aniston promised to always make Pitt
his favorite banana milkshakes whenever he wanted, and they both
agreed to split the difference on the thermostat. Could they be any
more perfect? Apparently not. Sorry Brad, looks like you
won’t be getting any more of Jennifer’s milkshake.
I guess all this bad news just goes to show that you really
don’t know people like you think you do. The image of Lincoln
as the ideal American prototype might be just that ““ an
image. Pitt and Aniston might have seemed perfectly happy to us on
the outside, but for all we know, he could have beaten her all the
time and she could have always forgotten to put the lid on the
toothpaste. As for the weather, well, all we can do is hope things
dry up as quickly as Pitt and Aniston’s love.
The dreary kick-off of 2005, however, might not mean the end of
Asian cuisine or that love is nothing more than a lie. But
it’s definitely hard to stay happy when we’re
surrounded by all this bad news. I guess all we can do is stay dry,
avoid relationships and hope we were born with that damn
“happy gene.”
Got a good recipe for a banana milkshake? E-mail Scott at
jscott@media.ucla.edu.