When did I realize I was happy? It wasn’t crossing a finish line, more like walking through a forest that straddles two countries; now I’m in a new country but no marker showed the line. Or like when you’re finally well after a long cold or a winter with chronic bronchitis. I can breathe today, you say, it’s easy. Was it so easy yesterday? I can’t remember, but now—aaaah.
Perhaps a line is an unhelpful metphor, perhaps it’s more of a tipping point, like slip-sliding down a sand dune. As I crept up on happiness, at first I wouldn’t look at it directly. “I’m more happy than not,” I’d say to myself. “In the main, things are going well.” But it’s hard to stay willfully blind forever. I have to look directly into the belly of the beast, and say, “Hey, this life thing really rocks. I should do more of it.”
I’m not trained to be happy; I’m a problem-fixer from a people who say that if you say things are well something bad immediately will happen. Turns out, not so much.
That’s good learning.
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