Journaling Happiness

*encaustic

“If I could take a bite of the whole world
And feel it on my palate
I’d be more happy for a minute or so...
But I don’t always want to be happy.
Sometimes you have to be
Unhappy to be natural...

Not every day is sunny.
When there’s been no rain for a while, you pray for it to come.
So I take unhappiness with happiness
Naturally, like someone who doesn’t find it strange
That there are mountains and plains
And that there are cliffs and grass...

What you need is to be natural and calm
In happiness and in unhappiness,
To feel like someone seeing,
To think like someone walking,
And when it’s time to die, remember the day dies,
And the sunset is beautiful, and the endless night is beautiful...
That’s how it is and that’s how it should be...”
― Alberto Caeiro, The Keeper of Sheep

We continually seek ways to be happy, to feel happy, to live happily.  The world, nature, people, places, things, bring us reasons to be happy, or not be happy.  There are a few things to contemplate in order to start manifesting your sense of happiness rather than fall into the pits of not being happy.  As we age, it is very important to find ways and means of happiness in our lives.  Some of us can get into the habit of seeing everything negatively without realizing that after our worst sadness can come our greatest happiness.  We just have to learn to wait it out, decide to make changes, and then living those changes.  As we spend some time contemplating our happiness, in order to do a journal page, consider these things:

Never judge yourself in comparison to others. We are delightfully unique.  We all have flaws.  I remember an elderly lady from a small town that went to England and was watching the Queen drive through in some kind of parade and she felt in awe until she realized..."Wait.. Even she menstruates".  (Mrs. Jacobs, Mt. View) We are all different, react and act differently to different situations.  Most of our judgments are misconceptions about our self and others.  Try remembering that we are part of the divine as are all others.  Being judgmental is one of our human flaws.  Try thinking above the milieu and remember all are gifts to the world, each have gifts to give, we do not know the soul of anyone else.  Heck, we hardly know our own soul.  Each have a purpose for being here, each has something to teach others.  What are you teaching?  Surely we are inundated with reason to look down on others with today's politics and politicians and the concentration camps at the borders.  Be divine in your thinking.  None of us are the same with different struggles and talents.  We all have personal rules and regulations.  No one has the right to impress rules and regulations on others, unless it is against the laws of the land.  We are all capable of making our own decisions and we make them through our own reasons of choices.  

Stop trying to fit in.  Let go of old stigmas and dogma that does not fit your own soul.  Stop punishing yourself for old ways of thinking that no longer apply.  Be your beautifully flawed self.  Change what you need to to feel happy. You are in charge of your own feelings.  We choose what we choose to feel.  Attitude is everything.

We worry so much about what is reliable and what we should avoid.  Social media is full of this kind of stuff.  We need to separate the wheat from the chaff. People who post the shoulds and should nots are people with control issues.  Jsut let it go and do what you feel like doing, as for me, I will use Splenda, I will drink diet pepsi, and I will eat meat and I will take Gabapentin for nerve pain and ... well, you get the picture.  I do what fits me not others.  As long as I am not doing drunks or alcohol, which is not good for me, not hurting others, not stealing, not...well you get that picture too.  I accept the fact that I will never be mediocre.  I can do triple cartwheel stumbles and say things without thinking, and dye my hair any color I want, and wear stuff most others would not.  I was never a hippy but I have always been dippy so I wear hippy dippy clothes sometimes.  No, no mediocrity here.  

Spend some time in nature and let it heal your soul.  Enter the space of sacred.  No sense worshipping rocks and trees, but worshipping the natural world as it was meant to be.  Treat Mother Nature with respect.  You know what insults you, so you know it all begins with one person.  Be that one person.  Be the gardener of what you can garden.

Do not allow yourself to get into a rut.  Some of us need the adventure, the excitement, and the joy it brings into our life.  Don't get stuck like a bump on a log.  Fill up your hours with things you enjoy that stimulate you, that fill you with awe. Do things that give succor to your soul.  Soon enough we will age to the point that we cannot do the things we want to do:  some of us are already having to cut down.  When you lose the ability to do one thing, substitute something you can do. 

Have your say.  We have spent decades saying what we should.  Speak out against injustice.  Get involved. Say no to things we said yes to and regretted it.  Stand up to and for others.  "First they came for the communists, but I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew. Finally, they came for me, and there was no one left to speak.” - a German pastor, who was saddened by the failure of the intellectual community to speak out during the Nazi reign.

Make your own decisions.  Be a free-thinker.  Question things that you always thought you should question.  Consider what you have been told to think, to do, etc and make your own understanding of things.  Try things a way you have not tried them before.  Surprise yourself.  We need magic and mystery in our lives.  Seek that and seek the answers.  No excuses.

What things make you happy?  What little things, what big things, what unusual things?  Make a commitment today to do what you can to keep a happy attitude about you.  Choose one or all of these things and express them on a journal page.  It does not matter how stick-figuresque, just find a way to do such.  You might surprise yourself.  You might find happiness in doing such.

©Carol Desjarlais 9.3.19