My son asked me if I was happy. I mumbled something about making Jizos and "Yeah, I guess so... "
Of course, there is always more to that story, right? I mean, happiness doesn't just descend one day and then live with you for the rest of your days - not in this life - not in my life anyway... Happiness visits from time to time out of nowhere and for reasons beyond my ken. Most of my time though, has been spent in worry.
The considerate thing about worries is that they change with the times of your life. As a young parent, I worried that the kids were going to be OK. As a young professional, I worried about "success." I worried a lot about money. Now well into the age of the walking ghosts - the disposables - worries center around continued employment, missed opportunities, what sort of person I am underneath the curated presentation others see, and what sort of end this will all resolve to..
And - this is all my fault, my responsibility, all of it.
I never developed a wholesome practice that could reliably keep the looping worry parade at bay, never could develop a personal relationship with Jesus or any of the other big names in the celestial dome... I reap now what I sowed in the past, and at this point - I don't expect big changes. Like Dylan says "Lotta water under the bridge - lotta other stuff too.."
And yet - happiness comes and sits next to me quite often - despite my carefully constructed armor of worry... It plops down with its rumpled lunch sack, unwraps a baloney sandwich with yellow mustard on white bread, sips unsweetened iced tea, looks up into the sky and says things like "ahhh.. feel that breeze.. look at those clouds.. is that a hawk?"
This morning - I was reading
Brain Pickings and found a Jane Kenyon poem on the topic of happiness - pretty close to true I think - at least for me...
HAPPINESS
There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.
And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.
No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.
It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.
~ Jane Kenyon ~