Monday, September 18: Happiness Now???

HAPPINESS NOW
Happiness now sounds kind of like cheating, doesn’t’ it? I mean, happiness after a long struggle, that’s what we like to see in the movies. How boring to come to a movie and it starts with the people smiling and enjoying each other and being nice, and they keep having a good time, and then for the final act, they keep on having a good time.

Nah. We like to either start with trouble and work our way up. Or start happy, have it torn away and claw our way back up to happiness. In our movies, anyway. And do we come to think that our lives have to be that way?

I think we do. What do you think?

Would life be boring if we were just happy, and then happy and then happy? I doubt it, but there is a lot of conditioning going on that says that this would be enough, isn’t there? Voices that say, that’s too much. Not for us. We don’t deserve that.

So, then, we come to the fine compromise in this country: the pursuit of happiness. It’s okay to admit that happiness is what we want, as long as it’s out there, either just slightly out of reach, or way, way down the road. But for now: we’ve got to get busy suffering and earning the happiness that will (maybe) come later, some later, some later that can keep receding, receding into the distance, like the end of the rainbow, that when chased down, always keeps slipping away.

The right job will make us happy. And then we have enough money and the right car will make us happy. And then the car will attract the right Babe, and she will make us happy. And the Babe wants children, and actually, kids do tend to be one place where people, ordinary, non-enlightened, non-hereandnow people, fall into happiness now and then. Watching the kiddies play. Hearing the kids laugh. Watching a baby smile or eat or learn.

These all remind us of who we really are, being that are meant to be right here now, and that when we are right here now, happiness or learning or both are usually taking place.

Fun.

So, when do we get to be happy?

When do we want to be happy?

Would right now, be okay? Could we tolerate that? What would we lose if we were happy hearing or reading these words, and we didn’t demand that first we check of whatever our usual list is of :To Be Accomplished/ Finished/ Achieved Before I am Allowed to be Happy?

This is a question that can be answered either by more words, or better by far, by us all putting down this book, or looking away from the computer, closing our eyes and going inside and scooping up a little happiness, listening to it laugh like a child, and experiencing as a way of being right now, not some theoretically state later, but experiencing right now, what happiness now has to offer for us.

Right now.