Chasing The Promise Of Happiness

Visiting the Writing Gods

Here again at the coffee shop having coffee and visiting the writing gods. I was dizzy when I got up this morning. An hour later a fire broke out close by. Music always follows me and tells me what I need. “I really don’t know life at all…”Joni Mitchell croons to me. Still somewhat dizzy, my lungs are hurting and there are pains in my gut as well. The fire has now created a toxic release of chemicals into the already smoky air.

Darkness follows me these days waiting for a chance to get in. I worry about money and it leaps into action, pulling me down. Beauty and music lift me back up. It is a fight that began long ago. A leftover from the nightmare of my second marriage. I go up and down – half full, half empty. Life is good. Life is bad. It is a state of mind and it makes all the difference. The mind controls the life and yet it seems the other way around.

I take a deep breath and feel a slice of pain and end up coughing. We sing to live. We dance to live. We write to live. Life is full of illusion. Now a new song comes over the speakers and some unknown person makes everything okay with banjo music. No words and still it defeats deadness and lies.

How to live through each moment and be happy – that is the challenge. People all have their methods and give me lots of free advice. I know they are all mean well and I also know they are struggling – some more than others. It is like the big unspoken secret that life is so hard. The elephant in the room. The fantasy is that life is fun and easy. We desperately want our children to believe that but they know. Even learning to walk is hard.

Life is full of puzzles. In one moment there are birds singing and a flower blooming and the dog running into my arms. In the next moment – I am falling into a hole. There is a fire and smoke and a toxic release of pesticides. There are people in shelters and pains in my lungs. To be okay through it all. To fall down and get up. To cry and then to laugh. No one really has the answers. It just doesn’t work that way.

I asked the Great Spirit to show me the way this morning. I might as well ask. It is the best part of living here – the mountains and the ocean – the sky and the sun and moon. Flowers, birds, rain, clouds. Rivers and creeks and animals. We are perhaps the most disturbed creature of all – the one that can endlessly think and arrive at terrible conclusions and live a vacant life unaware of beauty. How it got this way is beyond understanding. How to get back to our simple selves is too big a question. So yes, Great Spirit – I do surrender my assumed to be brilliant mind and I ask you for help to understand. Or if not that, then maybe clarity to see it doesn’t really matter.

Blank Page

This blank page is overwhelming today. I am empty. The only thing that moves me is the music. I feel like tearing off my clothes and being in bed all day where no one will see me. I have a pain in my gut and my back is aching – sitting here at a coffee table. I push myself more into the back of the bench. The man next to me has pushed his table too close to mine. I’m thinking of packing everything up.
I take another sip of my chai tea with soy milk. No frills. Nothing extra. I have nothing to give. I am spent. I sit here as an alternative to going home and being impatient with my mother. I am angry that she forgets so much – angry that she is not there for me. My neck is stiff as I turn to look outside. I have no energy to even call a friend.
The music fades into quiet for a few moments. I find myself craving that silent space. Now a woman’s voice fills the space. “I’ll do what I want…” I am surprised to find out that I don’t know what I want. Tears well up behind my eyes trying to speak to me. I don’t understand them.
Music is the one thing that stirs me. There is a purity in the voices. There is strength and power in the beat. I need that strength. I am trying to solve the puzzle of this thing called life. The fact that I am now 60 years old hovers over me. What is the point of it all? Money dictates what I do. It has nothing to do with what is important to me. I want to throw things and change how I spend my time. I want to hear the music that moves my soul.
Time passes. We all die. Some of us are remembered. My tears are getting impatient with me. I am frozen in passivity somewhere deep inside – letting time pass. It always has. I am used to that. I have spent years being unhappy. It is so familiar – almost safe to let life pass without a peep. Just live each day as it is given – not complaining – just bending like the willow. There is a time for that but I am 60 years old now. Now is not that time.
Reggae music sings out “What you going to do when your well runs dry?” There it is. That is my question to myself. And I am feeling dry. Empty. Blank. I force myself to do things that do not feel right. I say to myself that I have to be patient a little longer – that I am working on it.
There is an explosion in me. I don’t have the time. I do not have the answers. I feel the unrest.  I have made a hundred new decisions. I need to let the tears come. They will have answers. They have been pushed down for way too long.
I need to be an oak tree. An oak tree with roots that find water wherever it is. An oak tree that does not budge. Committed to myself. Reaching down deep to find my own wisdom. No one else can give me what I need now. I must give it to myself. I bow down to the power of the oak and gather my years of experience on this planet. Perhaps faith is really just remembering.

Up Before The Sun

Up before the sun this morning.  Silence and darkness.  There is a delicate breeze making music with the wind chimes.  Distant traffic noise from the freeway floats in the background sounding like ocean waves, and seagulls call out as they make their rounds.  I drink my hot tea.

I am nearly frozen inside as all the change collides.  I am birthing myself again at age 60 and labor is a marathon as usual.  I go through my days on a roller coaster of emotions holding onto my seat.  I am terrified, exhilarated, incredulous, broken-hearted and full of hope.  I take deep breaths and slow down.  I talk to friends.  I have conversations with my spirit selves asking for help all day long.

It is getting light outside.  I can see the great olive tree outside my window and the green grass beside it.  March has started and spring is not far away.

An ambulance goes by with its siren on, crashing into the morning peace.  Life is not manageable. And we learn as we go – making grand mistakes.  I have this notion that I should have life all sewn up into a nice package at this age.  Instead, I am broken and jagged.  I feel old and young at the same time.  I am afraid of death and hopeful about life all in one moment.  I take it as it comes – what other choice do I have?  This is how I learn and whether there is a point to the learning is a question I do not know the answer to.  So I birth myself into a new phase of life and enjoy the process.  I welcome it.  And it welcomes me.

The sun is up now.  Clear light – and the early morning begins a new day.  The birds never think about why – they just greet the dawn with song.  I feel grateful.

Sitting at a Coffee Shop Feeling Nervous

Sitting at a coffee shop feeling nervous.  Eating dry cereal from my healthy eating program and sipping on a skinny vanilla latte.  My hands are weak, almost too tired to push the keys.  Energy is in high demand this morning.

Last night I came home to check on my mom who has been sick.  I walked into a cloud of rank smell.  In my own house – the nursing home smell.  Every part of me screams no to this.  I want to run.  Run down the stairs and run out the door and get in my car and run far away.

Dylan’s music is playing here this morning – “Something happening here but you don’t know what it is……”  It takes me back and brings me forward at the same time.  A couple sits down at the table next to me and the woman smiles and says hello. I feel a slight kinship.

I don’t know what is happening and I am in a panic.  Is my mom dying?    All I want to do is get rid of that smell.  The smell feels like the enemy that is going to kill her.  I woke up this morning and had to leave.  I want to get as far away as I can.  I want to hire someone to be there and never go home.

I take a deep breath.  Breathing air in and out in the middle of a crowded coffee shop on a Sunday morning.  Distracting myself at the same time as paying attention.  The distraction is just enough to allow my nerves to calm down.  The voices and the music blend together and wrap around me.  Tears behind my eyes remind me that there is a healing force and this will pass.  I will find a way to take care of my mom.  I will get through this.  Answers will come.  This is a storm of not knowing.

Life really isn’t safe though.  Death is hovering over us all the time.  Life and death dance around each other even though we try to live forever.  And the only safe place is in this very moment.

I have now eaten my health bar and my cereal and my coffee is almost gone.  I am calmer but still on edge.  My hands want to have something in them and my mouth wants to have something to chew or sip.  More distractions that work.  I move to the next moment, balancing on a highwire.  Electric fear of falling on one side and calm trust on the other.  No one really knows how to live.  We are learning how to inch our way forward in the dark.  We carry enormous resources inside of us yet we know nothing for sure.  Not knowing may be the secret of the universe.

Meanwhile here at the coffee shop people come and go and they all have their plans for the day and their agenda of what they want to do.  They get their coffee and food and talk about things.  The children are excited and the adults mostly pretend to listen to them – some actually do.  It is noisy and yet everyone feels private in the middle of the chaos.  We feel safe – and whether we are safe or not, just feeling safe gives us a break from the fear.

The woman at the next table strikes up a conversation.  She says prayer is the answer.  She has found a way to feel safe.  Let God take care of it all.  A force separate from ourselves that is God.  Well if God is all there is – then each of us in all our imperfection and all of our not knowing are part of it.  The grand force of the universe is in our blood.  It guides us from the inside and does not give us all the answers.  I suddenly feel less connected with this woman who has the answer.

The music in the background now has a strong woman’s voice belting out the blues.  Her voice alone is enough.  The words don’t really matter.  She belts it out and leaves no doubt what she means. We are all strong and we are all weak.  It’s all one package.

So I am at least back to a level of acceptance that enables me to look at what to do.  I ran to the coffee shop and that was far enough.  My older daughter will meet me soon to plan together how to support my 82 year old mother – making as much order out of chaos as we can.  I will look at my lists and make progress in little ways.  Life will never be perfect – there is no way to avoid falling down.   We are all learning how to walk.

Chasing the Promise of Happiness

We are all promised happiness in some way.  It seems like our birthright.  There is a voice somewhere deep inside of us even in the middle of pain that insists that we have the right to happiness and joy.  The colors tell us this everywhere we turn and the birds scream it out.  Our skin feels something in the air.  And all the fairy tales end with the statement  – “and they lived happily ever after.”  Why shouldn’t we?

I remember waking up in the womb just before I was born and noticing how unhappy my family was.  I was alarmed and I tried to turn around and go back.  I yelled out with my mind – there has been a mistake!  This is not the family I asked for.  They are not happy people.  This is not right.  I cannot be born into this!  Someone out in the ethers assured me that it was the right family and it would be okay.  I was dubious, but it was too late.  And I was caught in the swirling power of becoming a human being.  It was not an easy birth – the doctors used forceps to pull me out and then hung me upside down by my feet and hit me to get me to breathe.  My mother was drugged.  I was alone in a brutal world in my first breath.

I have spent every moment of my life pursuing happiness or lamenting the lack of it.  It is my life’s work.  There are hundreds of thousands of things written about it and scores of people that have advice on how to achieve it.  Often the very people who profess to know how to be happy are like clowns with happy face masks on and when they take them off in private – they struggle with life and fall flat in utter failure.  The pressure of having to prove to others that one is happy makes the process more difficult.  Look at the life of most celebrities.  And there is no lack of temporary highs to give us short periods of feeling happy even though they may cloud our vision overall.

Now after years of chasing the fantasy, how to achieve happiness does not interest me as much as what happens to me along the way.  I am interested in truth and kindness – in love and understanding.  In the simple act of questioning and in the spaciousness of silence.  Perhaps happiness is our birthright and perhaps it isn’t.  But here we are.  And there are moments in each day that hold little pockets of pleasure.

So here is to the journey.  It is sometimes a fight to climb mountains and we fall down and sometimes we get it just right for a moment and it seems like we know.  Sometimes we are engulfed in loneliness and other times we are bursting with love and romance and all is well with the world.  At times our bodies fail us and we live with brutal pain.  Our children leave us and we wish we had not opened our hearts to them.  Then doors open and more people appear and laughter fills our hearts and heals us.  We grow wings again.  Life is a huge puzzle.  It may be that we are not here to solve it as much as just to experience it.  It may be that daily progress is happiness itself and that one moment holds the power to make sense of it all.