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| On Happiness I used to think that if I was happy, something was wrong. You weren’t supposed to be able to feel pure happiness. Now I know that if you are truly happy, then everything was right. You have to learn to deal with your problems. You can’t just think that problems are the inevitable downside of life. Because they aren’t. Inevitable, that is. You may almost always have problems, but the hardest part in life is learning to accept them. You can still be truly happy even with problems in your life if you learn to accept these problems. Happiness is not measured by how great something is, but how small nothing is. What I mean by this is that you can’t measure happiness in wealth or how someone may look. You can only measure happiness by how small the emptiness in someone’s life is. For, example, take an extremely rich person. Let’s call him Mr. Smith. He has millions of dollars in stocks and almost one billion dollars in assets. But he is terribly alone. He could never find anyone that he could really connect with. The only people in his life were meaningless, and not because of their position in life, but by their unwillingness to see Mr. Smith as a true person. Now take Frank, a homeless man with a wife and three children to support. He has close to zero dollars in total assets, which will become zero after he pays up for his debts at the track. Anyway, Frank has, besides his pockets, very little emptiness. He has a loving wife and three children, and together they have faith that they can make it through this rocky journey we like to call life. Who do you believe is happier? At first glance, one might judge Mr. Smith as the joyful one since he does live far more comfortably. But in fact, Frank is the happier of the two. Now life may be harder for him, but he has learned to accept his problems and work hard on straightening them out. By growing up in today’s society, happiness has become an even harder thing to obtain. We all believe (whether we know it or not) that perfect is what is needed to be happy. Now, this wouldn’t be such a bad thing to think except for this: We have the wrong idea of perfect. “Perfect people are pretty” or “perfect people have the goods” (i.e. the money, cars, guys/girls). First of all, who came up with the twisted notion that perfect is pretty? In many advertisements you see today, they show the beautiful people. The beautiful people drinking beer, or the beautiful people smoking (don’t even get me started). All the men are built up and buff, and the women have pounds of make-up on and expensive clothes. The image projected by these ads is almost unattainable. And look at the cars and expensive items in these commercials. It’s almost sickening to think of how much money these ad- companies spend to brainwash you into thinking “perfection” makes you happy. Ugly people drink beer, too. And they are still happy. *My comments: I just recently stumbled upon this piece. I had written it at least 7 or 8 months ago. Here is an unrevised version. Tell me what you think. I think I want to make a collection of pieces like these on different emotions...hmmm . Send your thought to Lesley865@aol.com Walk in the Garden (I'm trying to come up with a good title) There are an awful lot of flowers in this valley. There is a huge rose garden towards the east. The sun sorta climbs over the pink-budded bushes like a swan dipping its neck into cool blue water. In the morning, if you get up early enough, you can actually feel what it might be like to be one of them roses. Feeling the sun creep across your neck, feeling the gentle morning dew fall silently towards the ground. I think it’s the smoothness of the rose that people tend to like the most. It’s almost like touching nothing, as if a sweet air comes right between your fingers. The roses are prob’ly the prettiest flowers I got here, but I do doubt they’re my favorites. I reckon I take a liking to those daisies, though. They lie a bit yonder of the roses. The daisies can be perfect, why, sometimes even more pretty than the roses. But other days, they are about the most intolerable plants I have ever seen. I only stay around the east side, at least I have for the last coupla’ weeks. The west side of the garden is like nothing you have ever seen before. The vines hang sweetly by the sunflowers, wrapping ‘round the large cheerful plant like the hair of an angel. I used to go there a lot with Hank. Oh, Hank and I would always walk around the west side in the mornings. We never talked, heck, we barely even made a noise. And we didn’t have to; this place did all the talking for us. We could speak through the way our hands would touch the flowers, through the gentleness we used when we picked berries to make into jam for an early breakfast. It was nice out there. Just Hank and me. I thought time moved slower in the garden, but I guess it eventually caught up with us. The first day I went without him, I swear the sunflowers got duller and the berries grew bitter. I decided I wouldn’t go back there. Even if I’ve run out of jam, I just can’t bring myself to that place. Talkin’ ‘bout it gets me all misty-eyed. I used to go to those damn sunflowers everyday. I didn’t even know why. Now, I reckon those plants are gone; I haven’t tended to ‘em in so long. I’m afraid to go back, ‘cause if they’re dead I know I’m just gonna start cryin’ and nothin’ is ever gonna stop me. I can’t afford to lose them plants. Not now. *My comments: I just recently wrote this piece. It started out as an exercise for a creative writing class I am taking, but then it went a bit further. I really like this piece and am proud of it. Please email me at Lesley865@aol.com to tell me what this story was to you. |
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