Free Twelve by Twelve by Micahel Powers Page B

belonged to my parents — they had two and were happy to let me use one during my time in the 12 × 12. For the first few days I was glad to have it, using it to get around the rural area. Then, without even realizing it, I stopped driving.
    The car sat idle for a full week, then another. With my bike I moved more slowly, and the world grew larger and more interesting. I biked country roads through the rolling farms and woods, and the landscape revealed itself to me in depth and nuance. But there was one problem. I was the only one biking out there in the middle of rural North Carolina, so I was an oddity. There are more vehicles in the United States than people. Not having a car is generally viewed as one step away from living out of a shopping cart. The stares I’d get as I biked down Old Highway 117 South ranged from blank to scowling. That’s when Mike Thompson taught me the North Carolina wave.
    “It’s like this,” he said. He pretended to be holding handlebars and flipped two fingers and a thumb off the grip for a long second. And put them back.
    “That’s it?” I said. “Nobody’s going to see that.”
    Mike laughed. “Just try it.”
    On my next bike trip to check email in the Smithsville Public Library, I flashed an NC wave to the first pickup that passed. The results were instantaneous: a flash of two fingers and a thumb while the driver gripped the steering wheel. I tried it again. Another NCwave returned. As an experiment I tried a hand-in-the-air, buongiorno principessa wave a few times and was met immediately with suspicious frowns. The NC wave was a kind of secret handshake that proclaimed: I’m from here, too.
    Buoyed by this new insight, I read my email at the little library, chuckling over a satirical article a friend sent me from The Onion :
    CINCINNATI — The blank, oppressive void facing the American consumer populace remains unfilled despite the recent launch of the revolutionary Swiffer dust-elimination system, sources reported Monday. The lightweight, easy-to-use Swiffer is the 275,894,973rd amazing new product to fail to fill the void — a vast, soul-crushing spiritual vacuum Americans of all ages face on a daily basis…. Despite high hopes, the Swiffer has failed to imbue a sense of meaning and purpose in the lives of its users.
    Biking home, I asked myself: Did that car in front of the 12 × 12 imbue me with a sense of meaning and purpose? Blissfully, I exchanged NC waves with truck drivers and older men on porches. I noticed the sun, the wind, and my heart racing; pulse up (thump, thump, thump), the heart banging on my rib cage like sweaty, joyous palms on a drum, the butterfly spreading and drying its new, wet wings, and I was home quicker than ever. Up Jackie’s lane, waving across the pond to Mike in his bright red shirt, and wheeling into Jackie’s world. The slight, subtle abode, opening its door, smelling Jackie — her spices, her clothes — now mixed with my smells — my cooking, bread, cheeses, and the sweat on the previous day’s shirt.
    AFTER A DECADE LIVING IN GLOBAL SOUTH countries that often seemed as spiritually rich as they were materially poor, I couldn’t help asking myself about simplicity.
    I came across the work of a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Martin Seligman, who had managed to cut rates of depression in clinical studies. He calls his method “positive psychology.”In contrast with our mainstream therapy culture, which tends to focus on what’s wrong, Seligman focuses on what’s right — the factors that contribute to our general well-being, a state of inner joy and security. He found that three elements contribute to this: positive emotion, engagement, and a sense of meaning and purpose.
    The first factor, positive emotion, is necessary but not sufficient. If it’s bought for the price of Prozac or a bottle of wine, it’s transient. To last, it must come out of the second two factors.
    The second, engagement in the moment,