Maybe it was because I added a bit too much Jim Beam to my muffin recipe, or that I’d washed my skinny pants at the laundromat a few hours earlier. But as I licked the potent batter off the mixing spoon, I remembered how much I despise hipsters.
But, more disturbingly, how similar to them I am.
After I decided that adding more bourbon to the recipe was probably an even worse idea than licking a bowl’s worth of the batter, I walked to my closet and eyed its contents suspiciously. As if the clothes themselves would whisper, “Hey, let’s go listen to a band with some single-worded name–like, Recalcitrant–the members of whom sport haphazardly maintained facial hair, wear stretched, 80s-inspired clothes, and drink PBR like it’s a fine Merlot.”
But then, as I began twirling my phantom handlebar mustache, the stove timer dinged me back to reality.
Still, that disturbing thought kept scratching around the edges of my mind like The Ring girl did all the way up that slick, moss-covered well wall.
*Shudders*
***
Naturally, any hipster-centric thought conjures up images of the quintessential skinny jean faux pas: the muffin top.
And as I tested a piping-hot muffin and stared at the gray skinny pants I’d purchased a few years ago because the bartender at the boutique was cute and I was trying to act like I had money, I couldn’t help but think about how I actually look in the pants.
But, really, it’s not so much the potential apparel parallels between me and hipsters, but the whole mentality that seems to go along with it.
The whole “Oh, yeah, well, it’ll all work out because I’m just, you know, being here.”
Because, lately, I’ve been channeling a lot of atypical enthusiasm and positivity to keep my mind’s eye clear, the view of the future uncluttered by daily minutiae and stressors that have the potential to crack the base of resolve I’ve buttressed over the years. And I’ve said things that smack of the default “everything will work out” hipster phraseology.
Then again, maybe I should stop badgering the hipsters, critiquing their way of dealing with the world. Because a lot of them seem happy enough. Even if they’re probably suffering from RLS.
And, really, that’s all we can be these days.
(No, not suffering from occasional leg numbness.)
Happy enough.
Until something we do, achieve, or work towards makes us truly happy. If there is such a state as that.
At the very least, a happy without caveats.
It can be good to have enough. Enough so that you don’t have to struggle to make it day-to-day. Enough to be able to share a bit with someone who doesn’t have it. Enough time to enjoy a hobby or a casual day without hurrying through it. And you may not be happy all the time, but you can be content. And most days that’s enough.