FINDING IT, HOLDING ON TO IT
Wednesday, August 18, 2021
Happy must be in a hidden place; it is rarely found where it should be, within, calmly resting inside our state of mind to be accessed at will …
Too many people, it seems to me, aren’t happy. It should be easier, but it isn’t. I’ve spent too much of my life not satisfied, so I recognize the difference. Some days, especially some people, trigger old memories, which connect with a deep emotional response.
I know this.
It isn’t new.
Yet every time it happens, I react as if it’s fresh, unique, and perfectly packaged for that moment.
Recently – the meeting, the person – in a situation neither unusual nor outside the norms of doing my work, meeting people, and tackling the concern du jour …
Saying things we don’t usually talk about with strangers, writing something you wouldn’t usually write to someone you scarcely know – that kind of thing.
These are momentary and momentous, and looking back, they’ve seldom turned out well – but we stay in that mode for a while, the way we sometimes sit through a movie that takes us into unfamiliar territory because we want to know where the story will end.
Comfort zones and something we all have – to stay comfortable, we don’t rock anyone’s boat, and nobody rocks our world. If only!
Some situations, but not many – and some people, but not many – take us way outside our comfort zone. It’s unsettling in a wide-eyed adventure context.
Yes, please, steer me outside my comfort zone, guide me to my happy place.
Happy place, or state of mind, it’s not a physical place, but a mental one – sometimes an emotional one. But happiness must be balanced – some sad, some joy counterbalancing our low points, an equilibrium which is never constant, more like a ‘mid-point’ we pass through …
I want to go to my happy place, but happy got interrupted by a roadblock called reality, a pandemic that comes as frequently as a massive flood (once every hundred years or so), so my experience dealing with this – dealing with the daily deluge of information both real, and false – becomes an off-road meltdown sometimes, or just as often – a benign smile while shaking my head.