Choosing Happiness

I live 
in an amazingly beautiful part of the world.  I am just now, after months and really years, realizing it. Even in my suburban area, I am near wildlife and scenery that is vast and open and rocky but full of life.  To our north is the Mogollon Rim, Sedona, and the Verde Valley, to the west are the White Tank mountains and to the south is South Mountain and Camelback. There are mountain preserves all over with hiking trails begging to be walked and there are always the sunrises and sunsets. Everyone thinks of the sunsets here, yes, but the dawns are perfect- soft and shy even in the summer heat. The wispy cloud chains are made of pink cotton candy pierced by the creeping sun rays as it rises. And this stuff goes on every single day!

The other evening I was walking Robbie at sunset as usual.  This time of year, there are often high scattered clouds formed in the late afternoon.  The warm air was still as the sun started its descent in the west over the White Tanks. I wasn't thinking of anything in particular when I looked up and was struck at how achingly gorgeous it was to see and experience a beautiful sky of dazzling lights and colors with my eyes. It about makes you want to cry. I wanted to share it so I told Robbie to notice how beautiful it was but since sunsets don't smell, he didn't care. When you see something sooooo unbelieveably beautiful, what do YOU do?  I thank God.  I had to, its just the polite thing to do to praise such a talented artist.  I feel so lucky and so grateful that He put me in this place at this time to see these skies and appreciate it. So I told God how lucky I felt.

Choosing happiness is a new thing I am experimenting with.  For ohhhh about 30 years, I've always prided myself on being a pessimist. I reasoned that if I was pessimistic about everything then, if it turned out alright, I would be pleasantly surprised. So I usually did think the worst of my situation and of myself and sometimes others.  And how's that working out for me?  Well, it may not serve me well going forward because I realize that I've been missing out on a lot.  Now I'm hoping it may not be too late.

There is a plethora of stuff about happiness out there.  One google search will land you more about it than you could ever read.  So many quotes, so little time to digest them all.  Many come across on facebook timelines but not enough of them make it far enough to get INTO our heads and INTO our lives.  I've decided to give the idea of happiness a try though.

There is a perky, pretty lady who lives about a block away from me whom I have spoken to a few times.  Her husband died suddenly three months before Gary.  Her answer to grief and working through it is to walk and pray.  Everyone knows this woman if I describe her because she walks a lot and everyone has seen her.  She seems like a very nice person, but she also seems unwilling to go outside her comfort zone to meet new people and give them a chance.  She is still married to her husband and will be for life she says. She doesn't have a desire to go places without him now. I'm not going to judge whether she is happy or not.  Her grief is her grief and no one else's. It seems to me like a waste of time to simply wait until her own death to be reunited with her husband so she can go on living though.

My own newest choice is to be happy with my situation in the here and now.  Its not been too hard and I can see little bright spots like illuminated clouds which sparkle with bright peach colored joy.  These moments are bright only because they are made up of both light and shadow and they stand out against the powder gray background underneath their glow.  It takes both light and dark, highs and lows and happy and sad to realize what you are seeing. That's what I think.