“Everyone should
be that happy!” says senior David Wex. “I just recently got around to
seeing that video because I’m not super into rainbows. I saw it last
month, though – and nothing has ever given me a greater sense of
purpose.”
Wex has spent this past month in a well-blogged quest to find
anything in this world that he’d react to as ecstatically as the
famously wowed “Double Rainbow Guy.” He logically began with a double
rainbow, “just to be sure.” It elicited a simple “ah, neat.”
He then moved on to other natural phenomena. He traveled for the
next couple weeks and found warm afternoon rain, a volcano erupting, a
post-rain sunset, the northern lights, and the birth of a litter of
puppies “uncomfortable,” “scary,” “pretty,” “prettier,” and “gross,”
respectively.
After throwing down several hundred thousand dollars to see the sun
rise over the earth from a space shuttle and finding himself weeping
openly (and masculinely), he found he still didn’t experience the
prolonged wailing awe Double Rainbow Guy enjoyed. Wex tried to go
simpler, and closer to home.
“I asked my friends what makes them really happy,” he explains, and
formed a list. After weeding out
which answers were a definite no-go (“I’m not going to find what I’m
looking for at a Fall Out Boy concert, and I could take or leave getting
two bags simultaneously from a vending machine”), he set out to find
the little joys in life.
Largely, he found more of the same. “I smiled at so many babies, I
was asked to leave Ralph’s. And not one of those little jags would smile
back at me.” On his walk home one day, Wex managed to catch a stranger
singing to herself, which was “cute.” A spontaneous duet with his
roommate was “really cool.”
His continued search for his friends’ suggestions was similarly
disappointing. He watched an old couple hold hands, told a long-time
crush he loved her, went to an impressionist exhibit, attended a
friend’s wedding, and happened upon a large group of men in kilts, which
he found “uncomfortable,” “scary,” “pretty,” “prettier,” and “gross,”
respectively.
Wex literally stopped to smell some roses, then nearly gave up.
“Rainbow Guy must have been using performance-enhancing drugs. And by
that, I assume
shrooms.”
The realization that he had really enjoyed all these
experiences
is what saved him. “I’m still really happy! These things did all make me
happy. I guess I just express
myself differently,” he attests. He’s decided to search less vigorously,
but still maintain it as a hobby.
“Double Rainbow Guy, I do consider myself a cheerful dude. But
you…
You are my Buddha.”
