On My Happy Cloud

On Happiness...

I've been reading through my most recent Shambhala Sun magazine and it just INSTANTLY feels peaceful to do so. My head clears up and I feel calm again. The best part is that it makes me think deeply. It helps me to understand more fully.

It got me to thinking about happiness. I was reading an article from my favorite contributor and one of my favorite authors, Natalie Goldberg, called Waking Up to Happiness. In it she talks about how she was in bed sick for 5 weeks but how she was completely content and had to get back to feeling content again once she was no longer sick. One line in it is what made me put the magazine down and start thinking:

"You don't do happiness, you receive it. It's like a water table under the earth. It's available to everyone but we can only tap it, have it run up through us, when we're still. A well that darts around can never draw water."

So my thoughts on this were that happiness is everywhere. It's always around us and better yet, it's free. We can have it literally whenever we want. It has no opposite. It's not that it can't exist if anger, fear, worry, guilt or sadness are present. Because it can.

So why do we choose to not have it, I wonder. I know that I do choose to not have it. And often. It's something I always get onto my mother about because she SO CLEARLY does not want to be happy. She says she does but it's obvious that when you see it in front of her that she completely neglects it. I'm not innocent of this but she is a worse offender of it than I am. It is helpful in the way that I see it and recognize that it's not the way I want to be. I can't continue to tell her "You have to CHOOSE happiness, mother" if I can't even do it myself.

But as silly as it is to say that maybe it scares me to be truly happy, maybe it's the truth. But why? Perhaps I hold onto anger, sadness, bitterness and guilt as though they were possessions as if they're there to protect me somehow. The same way I do with my past or when I was severely depressed at one point in my life. Because it's always there as well and I have comfort with it because it's simply what I'm used to. You say to yourself, "Oh, I can choose happiness." but it's so difficult to do so when you haven't really ever chose it and you've lived with the sadness your whole life. I suppose that way, it can seem scary.

Happiness is the ability to be content in any situation. I think the biggest obstacle we as people face is that we have been conditioned to believe that happiness comes from things. Like possessions, food, clothing, friends, family members and situations. When I first started studying Buddhism, I saw these things as crutches, or support of happiness and it shouldn't be so (not to mention the pressure it may put on your loved ones! For them to know they are the only reasons you are happy...) because once the crutch is taken away, what happens? You must first be happy with yourself and then have the ability to live in contentment with the things and people around you.

And this is what I'm working on. Free happiness!

" I know, should realize, time is precious, it is worthwhile. Despite how I feel inside, I have to trust it will be alright. Have to stand up to be stronger. Have to try to break free from the thoughts in my mind. Use the time that I have, I can't say goodbye, have to make it right. I have to fight, cause I know in the end it's worthwhile. That the pain that I feel slowly fades away. It will be alright." ~Pale by Within Temptation


Much love and YES happiness :)

Elaine Bradley