Forgotten Feeling

I feel a feeling I have not felt in a very long time.

Happiness.
I am experiencing a deep, easy happiness.
With my family history and with my freakish good health, I’ll probably live another fifty years. Until recently, I saw that as a terrible thing — a jail sentence.
This sort of happiness is a secure happiness.
Of course, I’ll have bad days, but I feel secure now that happiness is going to be the norm for me from here to the exit.
With all due respect, my girlfriend is better than yours.
Wait! Is this “happiness” of which I speak just a blissful spark of love?
I don’t think so.
No matter how things turn out with V, this experience has taught me that happiness is certainly possible, probable, and likely, if I just stop trying to make myself miserable, go with the flow, and keep smiling.
I wasn’t kidding when I said the Universe is my friend. You can replace Universe with God, sure.
In the past, moments of what I thought was happiness would come up and I would try to hang on to them, like a drug addict trying to snatch his stash from the toilet. I never expected the moments to last anyway, naturally. I would try to capitalize on those moments and do as much as possible while the surf was up. Then when the wave crested, I would lament and crash and sink to the bottom and lie motionless… waiting for sharks… or aliens… or seal hunters to find me.
Over these last years, I have learned a lot about myself and about the world and about the universe (and/or God).
Lessons:
(a) Shit does not just happen.
(b) Stuff will not make you happy.
(c) You are your own worst enemy or best friend (pick the latter).
(d) Discomfort will not kill you.
Oh, there are more. It’s just a list you’ve already figured out anyway. It took me 41 years.
I am thankful for right now.
I am safe.
I am fed.
I am happy.

Comments

3 responses to “Forgotten Feeling”

  1. Thanks, Stephanie, for saving my life. You kept me going when I surely would have stopped. More hugs!

  2. I use to see a spark of the man you are now becoming Or should I say the man you are no longer fighting. Go with the flow. I like that and I am glad you stopped fighting your happy.
    You are a brilliant man and hold a heart that at times can seem bigger than the world. A love that great can change the world around him. Be sure to share your happy Joe and coming from a girl who at the age of 24 finally stopped fighting her happy, people will be forever changed by your happy. I am very excited for you and I am looking forward to where you are going from here. You have become one of my best friends and I am glad you are in my life. Hugs! Stephanie

  3. Love this post! Need I say more?

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