Finding Comfort (and Joy) in the Places You Would Least Expect

A four-step plan that may work only for me

Radical Pleasure. I’ve been pondering this loaded two-word phrase since Danielle Loewen announced it as the first Age of Empathy prompt for 2022, and it has led me down a veritable rabbit hole of thoughts. She summed it up as “a pleasure that reminded you were made for freedom and joy,” but that didn’t narrow things down for me much.

First there were the obvious possibilities. Seeing Springsteen in concert the first time was undoubtedly a radical pleasure, but I’ve written about that before. That one weekend in Vegas with Kate Beckinsale surely qualifies, though for some reason even post-Pete Davidson she denies it ever happened and the threat of lawsuits gives me pause. And sadly, it’s been so long since the Dallas Cowboys won a Super Bowl I can’t remember what that joy felt like.

Then it hit me, though in an oddly circuitous way. The phrase “freedom and joy” she used put “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” in my head (“tidings of comfort and joy”), which made me ponder the comfort part and how simple it is to get joy from comfort, especially in a really bad situation. Sometimes it’s not the mountaintop experience that is the best; sometimes it’s being lifted even slightly out of the valley.

Armed with this new epiphany, I could now see my course (writing-wise) clearly, ironic when you consider it came at a time when I was having difficulty seeing at all. Literally.

Eight years ago, the retina in my left eye detached. It was the result of something my ophthalmologist assured me was simply part of aging, though it only happens to about 0.5% of the population. He sent me to an eye surgeon who took a quick look and said, far too calmly for my taste, that we needed to do surgery the next morning or I might go blind in that eye.

I realize that this is nowhere near the same as a cancer diagnosis or some other potentially terminal disease, but I had become quite used to having two eyes and was alarmed at the possibility of losing one. Eyes are not like lungs, where you only have two so the cigarette smoke can collect in one of them while the other remains clear. I walked out of the surgeon’s office in a daze.

There are, thankfully, only a handful of times in my life when I’ve been faced with such a possibly life-altering event, and never before had it been one where all I could do was wait for the next day to do something about it. I had fallen into the valley, and my mind raced for any way to at least get up from the valley floor. At that moment, what would bring a small measure of comfort, the second cousin twice removed of radical joy? As it turned out, there were (and I suppose remain) four crucial things.

First, Springsteen (duh). As I drove away, assuming that if I wasn’t supposed to be driving the doc would have mentioned it during his 90-second examination, I turned on track five of the Born to Run CD as loud as my speakers would bear. Ernest “Boom” Carter’s drums crashed into a cacophony of guitar riffs as the title track washed over me, bringing instantaneous calm; at least I didn’t need two eyes to hear the brilliance that is Bruce Springsteen’s music. A small victory, yes, but baby steps. By the time Clarence Clemons’ haunting sax solo on “Jungleland” faded out I had reached my first destination, and crucial thing number two: St. Jude Catholic Church.

My relationship with the faith of my ancestors has always been a roller coaster; it took me ten years as an atheist to recover from twelve years of Catholic school. But just like Paul McCartney sang in “Let It Be,” when I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me. Actually, in this case it was St. Jude, the patron saint of hopeless causes, who I absolutely felt I needed at that moment (not yet having Googled the incredibly high success rate of retina surgeries today). The dim lighting and scent of fifty years of incense soaked into wood took me back to those days when my biggest worry was finding a ride to Six Flags. A few bucks, a lit candle, and half-remembered prayer were enough to add nicely to the Bruce-induced comfort and joy.

Praying can make a soul hungry, so from the church I rolled on to the next critical spot: the nearest Tex-Mex restaurant that served good cheese enchiladas. If you’re not from Texas this may make no sense, but there have been times where the only proof of intelligent life in the universe came from an abulela’s kitchen, and I needed proof of intelligent life right then. Plus, it reminded me that even if I needed a seeing-eye dog after the surgery, my taste buds were still intact and spicy queso was forever. Three down, with the final stop being perhaps the most important of all.

For me, long before I knew Springsteen and enchiladas existed and only shortly after I learned about saints, there were books. If I had to choose between the four things mentioned here, books would be the one that survived. What I needed now was to be surrounded by books, enveloped in them like in a mother’s embrace. I drove to the only used bookstore still remaining in my town, walked to the fiction section, and stood. I didn’t pull any off the shelf or scan the titles for new arrivals. For thirty minutes I just stood in the aisle, the scent of dust, leather, and old paper wafting around me. I only moved when another customer needed to pass; the store’s staff knew me well enough to not even ask anything.

At some point during those thirty minutes, and to this day I don’t know exactly when, I climbed out of the valley. The apprehension about the surgery and its potential outcome was still there, but no longer as a menacing black hound waiting to pounce. I bought a copy of a book I already owned as rent for the space I took up for half an hour, left the bookstore, and called my sister to arrange a ride to the surgery clinic.

It might not seem like the comfort and joy those four things gave me were the same level of radical as Bruce in concert or a Cowboys Super Bowl win, but when you’re flat on your face and someone or something puts you back on your feet, that’s a kind of radical joy we all hope we’ll have when the time comes. Even a one-eyed man can see that.