Skip to main content

For Happiness

I was lying on hammock tonight, big heavy clouds over head, the wind blowing through the trees above my head and the grass under my foot as I pushed myself.  I thought, This is happiness.

I am full, but not too full.  I am warm, but not hot.  All my people are home and around me and everyone is, if not perfectly happy, they are calm.  I have clean windows (thank you random window cleaning men). A cleanish house.  I have had hours with my kids at the pool (perhaps for the last time in a long time) and hold the title of walking the longest underwater on my hand record. Yes.  A happy husband (a thing to be treasured).  A quiet evening.  A moment to just sit and be still.

Yes.

This.

Is.

Happiness.

I feel the blessing of this like a comforting weight around my shoulders.  I know so well what it is like to feel the absence of happiness.  I know what it is like to feel fear, worry, hurt, sorrow, pain, anguish, regret, and anger.  So I know how precious this moment is.  I know right now, there are people I love so much, who are feeling any number of these things.  I feel for them.  I pray for them.  I pray I can help them. And I pray that even in small ways, while they are traveling a bit of a lonely road, that happiness will pop in now and then and ease their burdens.

It is rare.  Precious.  Priceless.

So next time you feel it . . . happiness . . .  welcome it.  Embrace it.  Stop whatever you're doing and soak it in.  Marinate your soul in the rich healing beauty of happiness and let it mend you.

I used to be afraid of it.  It would flicker in and out and I thought, Oh, you inconsistent friend. I can't trust you . . . you're too fleeting.  So I took it as a portent of worrisome things to come.

Silly silly me.

Now, I know what it is.

A gift.

Make friends with happiness.

Even if he's fickle and fleeting, he's a darn good time when he's around. And I'm telling you, I really like having a good time.  It's awesome.  I feel light, free, and like I can finally see clearly.

So . . . when next you feel happy, I say, throw your head back and laugh.  Hug and kiss.  Dance.  Set the weight of your responsibilities down and feel the lightness of beautiful possibilities.  Stretch out your limbs and let Happiness flow in.  This moment of joy is the most important moment of your life . . .

Trust me.  I know.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Forced Frugality

  We are going on ten months of looking for a job.   Last September, after a rather horrid ten months, John got the boot.  It was oddly and rather unfairly done, but a great relief to all of us.  Working at that company had become a puzzle that grew harder and harder each day until it was in fact, impossible.  The stress of it took a wild toll on John's mental and physical health.  By the end, he was neither eating nor sleeping.  He had strange episodes of racing heart and an inability to tell what was real and what was imagined.  I sat him down and told him I would use up every penny of our retirement and sell the house if it meant he could stop working in that environment.  And it may take all that.  And I still won't regret it.   When I feel rather sorry for myself, I remember what life was like for him a year ago and then I don't feel sad that I am once again digging through my closet to find a new way to wear old things.   In fact, there is part of me (small though it
Post a Comment
Read more

The Best Kind of Tired

  My often daily life . . . (John is two feet away—I can’t do all of them by myself) Last week, every single time I sat down, I almost instantly fell asleep.  I kept telling John, I have the sleeping disease.  What is going on?  Am I getting old?  Is it the covid after effects?  What on earth? He didn’t have any answers for me because he was doing the same thing.   We didn’t really do anything for seven days straights.   And our kids joined us in the sleepy, do nothing, lazy slug bug state. It wasn’t until this morning as I was looking over the pictures of the summer that I realized why. . . We literally haven’t stopped ALL summer long—one awesome amazing trip/visit/fun after the other.  It’s like we are making up for last years “staycations.”  Holy hannah have we ever made up for it.  Just about did ourselves in playing and hugging and kissing and caring for babies. Highlights of the summer (in no particular order): Cousin sleepovers have resumed (most missed activity since the pandem
Post a Comment
Read more

Midlife-Cri-sis

It's been a year.   I'll sum it up by saying that food no longer tastes good to me.   The last time that happened, I had lost three pregnancies in a row and John had lost and found a job and we had moved three times. The feeling is very similar.   There have a been a lot of losses or near losses.  Enough that when the phone pings with a text or vibrates with a call (I long ago turned off the ringer), I take a deep breath and think, you can do this .  More times than not, I need that deep breath. I am probably in the second half of my life and I feel it.  47.  My children are nearly grown.  My house is established.  Our bank accounts don't fluctuate like they used to. I don't go to the store and dream of being able to buy things.  I walk into my closet and wonder what I can do without.   I feel the finality of my existence and I wonder . . . what do I really want out of all this?   For book club, we read A Million Miles in a Thousand Years .  It's about re-writing o
Post a Comment
Read more