The Truth About Tigers

It’s not pleasure, not really. More like the absence of pain, the way a tooth feels fine until the ache returns and you realize how good fine can be. Most days, I move through life on autopilot, not noticing fine at all. I think maybe that’s the case for most of us. I only recognize it when something starts to hurt. When my back twinges, the way forty-five-year-old working-class backs tend to do. When the car makes a new sound. When someone I love is struggling. Then I remember how effortless things were a moment ago, when nothing demanded my attention.

It’s strange how rarely we name the absence of trouble. We give words to suffering, to joy, to longing and relief, but not to the even, unremarkable calm that sits between them. Maybe that’s why it slips away so easily.

It’s not contentment, but the absence of fear. Not confidence, but the lack of comparison. Not peace, exactly, but a brief reprieve from wanting things to be any different than they are. The Buddhists might call it the end of craving. I like to think of it as the pause between songs, when the silence still hums with what came before and the next note hasn’t yet claimed the air.

Sometimes I catch myself chasing the fireworks. The new projects and loud opinions and background noise, mistaking the bright moments for meaning. But the truest relief comes right after the flash, when everything goes dark again and the night feels endless and kind. I think maybe fine is enough. Life, in its quiet and ordinary way, is almost always better than it seems, if I remember to notice it before the next inevitable ache begins.