The Apple of Happiness

Alfric met a beaming Samuel outside the cloister.

“Blessed day Samuel. You look well.”

“Alfric, my friend, I want to show you something.”

“What is it? Where?”

“Follow me.”

Alfric followed Samuel, who led him to his cell and pulled out an apple from under his pillow. He presented it to Alfric:

“Here!”

“An apple?”

“Yes. But not just any apple. This is The Apple of Happiness!”

“A happy apple?”

“No, an apple that makes you happy.”

“So, you eat the apple and you become happy?”

“No, you don’t need to eat it - you just think about it and you become happy.”

“Are you sure? I’m thinking about it right now and am somewhat ambivalent.”

“Just give it some time to have an effect on you. No, not like that. No scrunching up your face like you’re birthing a thought. Just etch it in your mind and then go about your business.”

“Ok, I’ve imbibed it thoroughly.”

“Great. Now be off with you and see how you feel after the vespers.”

The two monks parted and went about their business. Alfric tended the cabbages with his usual assiduity yet kept the image of the apple in his mind all the while. He was peaceful at his work, as ever, and felt no change that he could discern. When vespers were called, he attended the chapel with the other monks. As they chanted, the apple remained fixed in his mind, and he noticed a changing within his inner world. His usual calm was slowly replaced by a strange ecstasy. This was not the feeling of his love for God or of His son, but a new kind of bliss. He neglected his celestial devotion, merely mouthing the words of his chant as his mind caressed the new feeling. Is this happiness? But it is an earthly happiness, for what is more earthly than the apple. Yet, it is temptation personified. It is the fruit that the devil crows is most fit to eat. But I have eaten nothing. I merely think on it and am wrapped in joy. Perhaps Eve should have been content with such mild activity.

After vespers Alfric took his lantern and stood vigil on the wall of the monastery grounds. He looked upon the world outside this place where he had spent the last fifteen years of his life, tending cabbages, chanting vespers, and loving God. The moon showed the river in perpetual ease, moving on its predetermined course. And yet the river was as free to be happy as any creature capable of charting its own course. It knows its place. The apple skipped from Alfric’s mind. He returned to peace and went to his cell to sleep.

The next morning, he woke with The Apple foremost in his mind. He gripped his sheets as an agony of joy overwhelmed him. He stared at the ceiling unable, unwilling, to move from his bed. He missed his morning prayers. Not even when he was sick had he ever done so. Thus, the abbot came by his cell to find out what was wrong, fearing the worst. He found Alfric sitting on the bed, feet on the floor, and head in his hands.

“What ails you, my child?”

“I am happy, father.”

“And why is this a bad thing?”

“Because I am not thinking of God.”

“My child, you may not be thinking of him, but he is clearly thinking of you and shining a light upon you. Happiness is God’s light, after all.”

“Perhaps you are right. Tell me, father: were Adam and Eve happy before the fall?”

“Happier than any who followed possibly could have been. We are but shadows of the perfection of their temperaments.”

“Then why do we not try to be like them. To live simply, in the garden of the world. Why do we complicate things with liturgies and gospels, papal decrees and laws?”

“I worry that you have forgotten who are, young Alfric, and what we all are in God’s eyes. We cannot return to the garden. To be mortal is to toil and suffer strife with your fellow man. Our devotion to the laws of the divine keeps the mass of man from straying into darkness. The garden is only for the pure, but not for those of sin, as we all are.”

“But if I were pure. If I were as nature. Could I not re-enter the garden?”

“Banish these thoughts, child. Only in death, in heaven, will such be found. Until then we have much work to do to ensure as many reach it as possible. Return yourself to God and be at peace.”

“I will try father.”

After the abbot left, Alfric rose and walked resolutely from his cell to Samuel's. He looked under the pillow but could not find the apple. Samuel appeared some minutes later and found Alfric sitting on his bed, just as the abbot had found the young monk earlier in his own cell.

“Alfric? What's going on?”

“Samuel! Where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“The Apple, of course! I must destroy it.”

“Oh, the one I showed you yesterday? I ate it.”

“You what? You dubbed it The Apple of Happiness, and then you just ate it?”

“Well, that was yesterday’s Apple of Happiness. I ate that one this morning. Here is today’s one.”

“Another Apple of Happiness!”

“Oh yes, I have a new one every day.”

“This can’t be. I’m going to be happy forever.”

“Then why are you so glum?”

“How do you do it Samuel? How do you be so happy yet so devoted to your prayers? To God? Don’t you find all the words, the theology, the confessions, so unnecessary when you can just think on the apple and be transported to an Earthly heaven?”

“Oh, well, I don’t think of it that way. I just like the look of apples. They make me feel good. So simple and innocent. What’s not to like? I don’t see what it has to do with God and theology at all.”

“But you’re a monk, Samuel. Everything has to do with God!”

“Only if you think it does. I spend my time thinking on God, and I spend my time thinking on The Apple. They’re not mutually exclusive.”

“But why think on God at all if The Apple alone makes you happy? That’s my point!”

“Oh, well, I’m a monk, like you, so it’s our duty to think on God. It would be selfish otherwise to think on apples all day. Besides, if they kick me out of the monastery for not doing my duty then how am I going to get an apple from the kitchen each day?”

“In a mad way, that does make sense, but it really shouldn’t. I’ll see you at Midday prayers, Samuel.”

Alfric went to the plot where his cabbages grew, rested his chin on the end of his hoe, and stared into the churned soil. Why do I grow cabbages? I hate cabbages. Although Godwin likes them, and the Abbot. I grow their happiness, I suppose, just as Samuel grew it in me. We each have our garden to tend and this is mine. Returning to peace, he picked up the hoe, resumed his toil and never thought of The Apple again.