If this isn’t nice, what is?

Just thought that I’d write down here that it’s been a very very good week. No one thing in particular, just a lot of things with work, family & friends just went very very well this week.

Brings to mind one of my favorite little passages from a not-very-well-known book of Kurt Vonnegut: God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian:

My late Uncle Alex Vonnegut, my father’s kid brother,
a Harvard-educated life insurance agent in Indianapolis
who was well read and wise, was a humanist like all the
rest of the family. What Uncle Alex found particularly
objectionable about human beings in general was that
they so seldom noticed it when they were happy.

He himself did his best to acknowledge it when
times were sweet. We could be drinking lemonade in
the shade of an apple tree in the summertime, and
Uncle Alex would interrupt the conversation to say, “If
this isn’t nice, what is?”

I myself say that out loud at times of easy, natural
bliss: “If this isn’t nice, what is?” Perhaps others can
also make use of that heirloom from Uncle Alex. I find
it really cheers me up to keep score out loud that way.

If this isn’t nice, what is?

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