Friday, August 18: the Importance of Happiness

THE IMPORTANCE OF HAPPINESS
We are alive. Yep, you are alive and I am alive. This is wonderful. And to know and feel and love and enjoy and like and savor this wonderfulness is to be happy. This is one of the reasons we are alive, I do believe. What do you believe?

To be happy is to be glad you are doing what you are doing. This can be all the time, even while we are doing something that we could talk ourselves into disliking while we do it, like changing the baby’s diapers, or being in a car to get somewhere we want to go. But we want to get to the beach, so we must be in the car and then, how to be happy in the car?

Breathe. Remember we are alive. Sense our bodies. Shift our bodies and our minds to be a little more comfortable. Shift our bodies and minds to try something new. Shift our pelvis forward and backward. We can even do that now, and a little bi of a chuckle might rise in us.

Go on. Shift. Tilt your pelvis, rhymes with Elvis, forward, so your belly is pushing forward a bit, push that belly out and even arch your back a little. Great. Now tilt your pelvis so you are rolling back toward your sacrum and your belly is coming in and your are folding forward and your back is going and rounding back. Great.

Do this back and forth and experiment with breathing. Breath in when your belly goes out and out when your belly goes in. Now turn it upside inside out and breathe out when you push your belly out, like grunting or some animal and breathe in (filling your chest) as your belly comes in.

That’s playing around. That’s learning. That’s part of being happy. It’s a big world and full of ways of experimenting and playing and learning. Now I’m going to go outside and sit next to the Earth and put my thumb on the Earth and chant for awhile. You may never do that, but I hope you have a way to get outside and touch the Earth with both your hands and your bare feet today (weather permitting, depending on what time of year you read this; and even in the winter, touch the Earth and a tree or two and some plants with at least your hands; at least that’s my idea of one of the ingredients to happiness.)

Happiness comes from simple things. Breathing. Moving. Aware-ing. Touching. Going outside. Breathing outside, moving outside, aware-ing outside, touching outside. And then, with a friend, touch, breathe, move, aware. Dance with your friend, some dance, any dance that is deeper and more real than the chatter with which we hide from each other. Dance a real dance, or a do a taking a walk and not yammering dance, or a knitting together or gardening together or riding a bike together dance.

Dance is life, moving is life, happiness is life, Nature is life. Being aware of this while we live it, is to be a real human, and often we forget, making it all the more sweet and wonderful when we wake back up to the moment and remember.

Yes.