What is " The Secret?" A Fairytale

In 1964 at the age of nineteen just returning from a deployment overseas I was asked by a young lady what was the secret to love, life, and happiness?" Without thinking I blurted out, "a window seat." She looked at me strangely and I regret through my shyness I could not explain to her what I was thinking at that very moment and why my answer made perfect sense. 

Let me explain. "The Secret" is a book about achieving happiness and success basically by using the power of positive thinking whatever phrases and techniques espoused by its author or interpreted by the reader. Please, you true believers, don't get angry because if you are reading my blog I'm already very attracted to you for your intellect and adherence to the principle of the "Law of Attraction" as espoused in "The Secret." If you follow this 'law' religiously you are a positive person which brings to my mind . . . being at least 50% pessimistic, my half-full glass of liquids often half-empty . . .  my studies in Psychology. One thing I studied was Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: 1. Physiological Needs, 2. Safety Needs, 3. Needs of Love, Affection, Belonging, 4. Needs for Esteem, and 5. a Need for Self-Actualization 

I knew then, as I know now, that a more accurate point of view, other than Maslow's Needs or The Law of Attraction would be the 'Law of the Window Seat.'

 

Let's put aside such foolish needs as water, food, energy, air, and suitable living conditions as being necessary for life, happiness and success. I must admit, however, it's hard to be happy, successful, or sexually aroused if you're dead. While avoiding thoughts about the after-life, I became enmeshed in an intellectually train of thought mixed with a wee-bit of biotic and abiotic factors or sex. Biotic Factors defined, meaning of or related to life, such as plants, animals, fungi, protists and bacteria which are all biotic or living factors and abiotic factors defined, meaning nonliving chemical reactions or sometimes the term is related to factors that affect living organisms such as habitat, weather, political economy, etc. Sex needs no definition unless you are President Clinton testifying before Congress and quibbling over what ‘is’ … is.

 

It just so happened that the young lady that was about to ask me about the secret I was picking up at a hotel after meeting her the previous day when she stoped me asking for directions. Fortuitously she was from Singapore and I had recently been in Singapore during Singapores’  transition from English Rule to Independence. We hit it off immediately and decided to explore the city together. That day we explored the city, took many photographs, and decided the next day to further see the city together.

When I went to pick her up at her hotel, in her room was a two-foot wide window sill (more like a window seat) stretching the length of a huge picture-window overlooking a panoramic view of the city of Seattle. Another contributing factor is that the Space Needle in the near distance looked somewhat like a phallic symbol. At that moment I felt the secret of my personal happiness and success would be making love to her on that window seat. Don't blame me for such a fairytale like thought  . . . she was an incredibly beautiful Chinese woman with a magnificent intellect and, as I found out, wealthy as well. 

When I think back about what life would have been like with her if I had written that best selling book about happiness called "The Secret," better titled “The Window Seat” and expressed my secret yearning for her laying upon that window seat in my arms I think how wonderful life would have been or who knows maybe a disaster.A fanciful idea as we never even kissed or held hands, departed a s friends, and never contacted each other again. For the life of me I Cannot even remember her name. 

After being discharged I married and my wife destroyed all the pictures I had of any woman I met while in the Navy including the pictures taken in Seattle. We divorced after many years and I remarried to a wonderful fiery red haired petite English lady who had become my best friend and during our acquaintance (we were business associates) divorced her third husband. Rather than going into another story I will simply state my current wife said, with a big grin on her face, she would have liked to see those pictures of my past life and all those women I had been “attracted” to.