This struck me as odd last night. I have an incredibly happy cat. She slept with me all night long last night, as she often does. And she laid there purring away all night long. .

Periodically during the course of the night, like four or five times, I woke up in the middle of these really weird dreams. These sad, painful, traumatic, intense, tragic, melancholy kind of dreams. The kind of dreams where you lay there thinking: “Why is there this deeply disturbed process going on in my soul?”

Then I’d look up and there’s my cat lying on my chest. Just purring away. Without a care in the world. (She even does this thing when I turn over on my side while I’m sleeping. She doesn’t fall off of me. She manages to scramble to keep her balance and sleep on top of my side. She reminds me of those loggers who keep their balance as they’re standing on the logs that are floating down the river even though the logs are spinning round and round.)

So I’m thinking: The cat is this simple, basic animal with a very small brain. And she has no idea where her next meal is coming from. Or what she’s supposed to be doing with her cat life. Let alone any kind of grand retirement plan for how she’s going to deal with her old age. And yet, she’s perfectly happy.

While I’m a human being with this relatively big brain, and this incredibly complex life with this myriad of possibilities. And yet, I’m the one that’s miserable.

I thought, maybe I should give some thought to see if I could figure out this quandary. . . . But then I thought, maybe that’s the problem.

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