My two year old son was sad on the long drive home today. Very sad. Car sick, tired, miserable, alternating between tears and distraction to the sound of my barely coherent ramblings. We get home, and I unpack, and all the while inside the car he is the picture of misery. I take him out of the car, and he’s happy! He gets a bath, changed, a song in bed, and all the old suffering is gone, replaced by joy and security.
As an adult, as we go through the year, there is a tendancy to make happiness an average. If my reasons to be happy are more numerous by some reckoning than reasons to the contrary, than I declare myself “happy”, with all the perks that entails. We can learn from a baby that it doesn’t have to be like that. Our bad times are bad, but that doesn’t change our good times. Every good moment is a gift to treasure and enjoy, without being marred by troubles which proceeded it or what we fear will follow.
We don’t let our blessings disturb our dark slumps when things are down, why do we allow stress to distract us from the good things going on in our lives?
I am not old enough or wise enough to guide on how to deal with suffering. But I have this to say about happiness: enjoy it.