Happiness

Today I want to write about happiness. I don’t feel that I am any kind of expert on the subject. Probably my real reason for writing about it has to do with my own surprise that I am happier than I have ever been. I didn’t really expect to be happy. I never made it a particular focus (a priority) of my life either, so you can imagine my surprise and curiosity about this burgeoning feeling of well-being. A part of what I want to write has to do with my suspicion that my happiness has come with getting older.

What makes us happy? Probably, the answer to that question is as diverse as we humans are. Still, I can’t help but notice that I am experiencing a kind of happiness that doesn’t seem to be emanating from the world around me. I don’t know about you, but I grew up, until now, with the notion that when things, and I mean stuff like money, jobs, homes, relationships, vacations or enlightenment, lined up, then I would be happy. I have almost none of that today and I’m happier than ever, so what gives?

Happiness, at least for me, seems more to be an internal phenomenon rather than being something out there. The happiness I find in the world, I seem to find first in me. That is a radical change from the idea of happiness I first learned.  Strangely owning my own home doesn’t make me as happy as owning, and being comfortable, in my own skin. One is an economic achievement, the other is a harder-won acheivement with my self. The sense of being at home in my home is more gratifying and sustainable when I occupy myself.

Happiness has become more of a reality to me as I have aged. I don’t think that merely aging did it. I think something happened inside me. I ripened into happiness. For me the happiness accompanied my gratitude with living. I came through a lot, through a long time of being more dead than alive, through a time of realizing I was being given a second chance, and through being surrounded by a host of others, mainly old folks, who similarly struggled, endured and found a way to happily persevere. It appeared that I was happy because Life had put me through the wringer and I had emerged more solid than I once had been.

I came to being happy not because I aged, but because I aged well. What do I mean? Well, I’m still formulating this, but it seems that I have something to do with the fact of my happiness despite being disabled, and having to ask others for help (a widespread fear), and having no insurance (the economic social net), I am still somehow happy. I know, in part, it’s the company I keep, but I also know I can keep company with some pretty unhappy people and retain my appreciation of Life. I am happy for no good conventional reason. No, I don’t think it is because I’m crazy. I’m weird but not over the bend. I’m happy for a non-conventional reason, because I’ve become what the Universe intended — myself.

If I sound a little like Walt Whitman, so be it. Life has shaped me into a misshapen, dysfunctional being, which is a horror story of possibility for anyone who really takes my life in, and has conferred happiness upon me. How can that be? I haven’t been able to believe it for the longest time. So I wouldn’t blame you, if you don’t. But, it seems with all that has gone wrong — with all that Life has put me through —happiness erupts.

I can explain it, at least I think I can. If words don’t fail me now, then I can explain that the miraculous (that’s how it sometimes seems to me) can happen in anyone’s life. Happiness is a by-product of inner life, not dependent upon anything external. It is what happens when one really gets how lucky they are to be in this vulnerable, teetering, human-scarred world. It isn’t a state of denial, a refusal to know just how bad things are, it is an appreciation of what is. I’m not happy because Life as we know it is in jeopardy. I’m happy because it exists, and I get to know it for a time.

My happiness emanates from the ground I wheel around upon. That is dirt for sure, earth of the most perishable sort. But it is more than that too. Not more, in the sense of other than that, rather in the sense of that extended. I am happy because I wheel upon the soil of my self. The two are not really two. The Universe, and Life on Earth, are composed of both, and both are part of the same thing — the life force of the Great Mystery. Check it out, it’s going on right beneath your feet, and right within you.

I’m happy now because I can perceive the movement of the whole happening most anyplace. It hurts, in some different kind of way, to experience so much denial, fear and hatred, but my sense of happiness can embrace those pains too. Mainly, because I can feel Life welling up, happiness wells with it.