by Howard Hain

Vincent van Gogh, “The Stone Bench in the Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital” (1889)

There is so much “excitement” in the world.

Politics. Sports. Entertainment.

Even in the simple act of kids going back to school there is so much hoopla.

We can’t just do things simply. Everything has to be planned, announced, delved into, broadcast into something “grand”, “life-changing”, “utterly profound.”

But the more we need to insist that something is the case, the less in reality it usually is. For excitement, like authority, is something that by its very nature announces itself—and it decreases in direct proportion to the need to have it proclaimed.

In other words, just because we make “a big deal” about everything doesn’t mean it is. In fact, it is normally quite the opposite.

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I remember when a child’s birthday party was composed of eight or ten kids sitting around a kitchen table, wearing…