I admit it, I’m one of those people who click on blog posts with titles like “how to find your bliss”, or “ten things that the happiest people on the planet do every day”. Because happy sounds really good and like most of us, I like the idea of following a formula to get there. And stay there.
Preferably an easy formula with a short list of things to do that won’t take too much time out of my day.
The problem is that there is no formula for happy.
You can craft the most amazing morning routine ever, complete with meditation to connect with the Divine, exercise to connect with your body, green juice to connect with all-other-green-juice-drinkers, and visualization to connect with your dreams but none of that will guarantee happiness.
Because life happens.
And life includes both good things and bad things.
Imagine that you’re headed to the grocery store. You hit every light when it’s green, traffic is non-existent, and you get a front row parking space. Life is gooooood – it’s going to be a great day.
You breeze into the store, which isn’t crowded, see that they’ve just gotten a delivery of produce so you get first pick at the freshest selections, and everything on your list is on sale that day.
Oh yeah, life is great. This is happiness, for sure.
You slide your cart up to the checkout, pick the line with the fewest people, pull out your phone to check Facebook and maybe even update your status so everyone will know that life is gooooood.
Ten minutes later you’re still waiting to load your groceries on the conveyor belt, the customer in front of you has a thousand and one coupons, and the register tape runs out – twice. You realize you picked the wrong line, but now it’s too late because, you notice, the store is packed and every other line is full.
It’s amazing how quick you can take a turn down the why-is-this-happening-to-me path.
Good things. Bad things.
Some people say that it’s the way you react to bad experiences that determine whether or not you are happy.
There is some truth to this. Attitude is extremely helpful in maintaining a positive outlook, and it just might do the trick in a grocery store line moving at a snail’s pace.
But life’s wrongs don’t always come in such little packages.
Some say that life is pain and you just have to suffer through it and wait to get to heaven before you get to be happy. I do believe in heaven, and I do believe that there is perfect peace, joy, love, and happiness there. But to say that life here on earth is simply one to endure doesn’t seem quite right. Why would God create us to suffer here, before we go there, like it’s the price of admission? This doesn’t make sense to me, nor does it sound like Love, which is what God is.
Here’s what I think: I don’t think life is supposed to be heaven (complete joy) nor hell (total pain).
I just think it’s supposed to be what it is, and maybe we shouldn’t even be looking for a happy-all-the-time formula.
Because life is both happy and sad, and I think that’s supposed to be okay because there are lessons in both.
Pema Chödrön says in that if you can sit with your hot loneliness for 1.6 seconds today, and you couldn’t even sit with it for 1 yesterday, then you are a warrior.
Sitting with your hot loneliness doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt. Hurtful things hurt. Painful things are painful. We don’t have to deny this, but we also don’t have to run from it.
The warrior sits with her pain and learns its lessons, but she does not deny that the pain is real.
She sees it for what it is, feels it as what it is, and emerges stronger and wiser because she has traveled through it.
The warrior knows that there are lessons in both joy and sorrow, and she knows that neither is permanent. Both are merely a season.
Life can be good and bad and beautiful and ugly, but we don’t need to run from any of it, numb away any of it, or deny any of it.
We simply need to show up and live it with as much love and courage as we can muster, knowing that eventually we’ll make our way through.
Warriors always do.
~xo,
LuAnne
