It is getting harder and harder to wake up with joy with the restrictions and our ‘normal’ way of living and coping is restricted more and more. Just when we think things are going to get a bit easier, wham! New cases and new restrictions. It feels like Forever not Happy. Yes, there is still gratitude and hope and all that, but those times feel few and far between. It is already difficult being elderly with all the elderly 'chite' happening, and now add more isolation, less activities, and we are hanging on to our social media, our phones, and waiting for something to happen that is good news.
Happiness comes in so many forms. It comes in receiving and in giving. It comes when we want it to come …for it is a choice we make every single moment. Happiness is a choice that helps us progress towards the better things of life. We can pick and choose people, places, and/or things that make us happy.
When we are born, the only thing we know is pain and hunger and craving for soothing and comfort. WE, actually, learn and are conditioned to know satisfaction, first, and then, as the months go by, we learn happiness. This is just my thoughts on the matter. Once we learn what makes us happy, we demand such and then expect happiness and that others will make that happen. We get so used to other people making us happy (and then the whoosh of sadness when it doesn’t any more, or simply stops being so) that we forget we are in charge of our own happiness. Outside happiness is fleeting. Happiness is a bonus above life just being plain survival. It takes practice and we have the power to condition ourselves.
Spend time looking around you and noticing smiles. Right now, there will be many furrowed brows. Can you consciously smile at those you see that need one? Wearing masks will tell truths. Many of us smile with our mouth but the smile does not go all the way up to our eyes so it is not from inside out. Now, again, with masks, we have to really smile so our eyes show our truths. Sharing a smile hurts no one. In fact, the act of smiling adds to our dopamine and serotonin. Yes the world is a mess. Yes, we won’t see many people. But a smile can speak volumes to the few we get to offer them to. Even looking lovingly at others, compassionately, makes our own world a lovelier place to be.
Practicing happiness is not something we are used to, as I said, we expect other people, places, and/or things to make us happy. When we rely on outer gratification of happiness, we can be, most have been, really hurt to have that person, place, thing not be what we expected. As well. I think that we get addicted to that and we need more and more. I think the problem with this is that our well of gratitude has a leak in it. It is only sealing up those scarred places, those leaking places, with inner joy and contentment and satisfaction can we then hold happiness within and it will spill out on others through our eyes (above the mask) as it should. It is then that we matter in the world.
When we think inner happiness, we begin to feel more positive about ourselves, and happiness is easier to feel. It is easier to get through tough places and spaces when we move through life with a base of happiness and how to find it amidst the worst of times. We can learn the lesson and happiness can have some of that space. Even in grief, there can be a happiness if we seek it. Of course, it is not going to happen over night. As I said, “practice|” is what it takes. We can re frame our mind set. We can use our feminine power to practice happiness and send out that energy into the ether.
©Carol Desjarlais 26.11.20
***inspired by Christy Sobolewski
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