 Image from crazylittleprojects.com "Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love." --Mother Teresa We all have those days in our lives that make us grumpy, unhappy, or just plain "blah". Sometimes those days are random and sporadic, sneaking up on us and pouring out to coat our everything in sticky slime (those are the days when even the smallest things are irritating, i.e. someone cutting us off in traffic, or being snarky because we've been interrupted). Other times they seem to stretch on for weeks, months, years, hanging around and nagging like a fish wife. My mother died at the young age of forty-seven, alone and unhappy (consequently, these two things really have nothing to do with one another except in their power to blow each other up disproportionately). Considering the fact that my mother was raised, in part, by my Aunt Mattie, a woman who could find the "happy" even under the bleakest of circumstances, it is still difficult for me to understand why mom was never able to do the same. It reminds me of the child who is anxious to do something, but when he or she actually gets to do it, they focus on what comes next instead of enjoying the moment, verses the one who gets an amazing gift but is perfectly happy just playing with the box and will make up a hundred ways to pull "joy" out of the box. I find it completely perplexing! So, where does the "happy" live? And why does it seem as if some people are privy to its mystery hiding place, while for others it forever remains elusive and out of reach? Happiness is a choice, and for me "happy" lives all around...in little things, like watching the butterflies flit, dance, and nuzzle on the bushes in my backyard, or listening to our resident bullfrog, who lives in our pond, talk day and night to the ladybugs and dragonflies. It also lives in the big things...like recent birthday wishes, many from friends I've never met, who sweetly acknowledge that I exist and make me feel as if I matter. But the biggest place where my "happy" lives is in the love that surrounds me, from my family, my friends, colleagues past and present, and my ancestors who have gone "on" to whatever lies beyond this world but have left their mark on me. Love is not a shield, protecting us from pain or bad things or troubled times. Love is the buffer that makes those times when we stumble and fall, ache or grieve, less painful. Love also helps me to regain my focus, so that I don't keep it on the things that make me feel broken and unhappy, even though pulling them out and understanding them is important. Love is what turns my eyes away from those unhappy things, when it's time, and reminds me that there are many other things to look towards that make me feel thankfully, blissfully alive! And when all else fails to give me comfort, and I feel as if one sorrow or another will drown me, I reach into my emergency "happy" kit...filled with, among other things, COOKIES! They are a perfect item to remind me that life is good!  Image from opensky.com
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About The Author
I grew up in rural North Carolina. When I was only nineteen, I moved away and became a military wife. My only aspiration at that tender time in my life was to create an adult life that "fixed" all of the "injustices" of my childhood. Secretly, however, I wanted to reach for the sky! I wanted to be a writer and find ways to "save the world" (my mother used to say, "You have Save the World Syndrome".). Mostly, I wanted to matter. Archives
August 2021
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