You can't hold it all anyway.

I read that the eye moves 50 times a second, taking in as much as it can of the world, faster than we can conceive. If that is true, then what happens to all those images? When days seems to disappear too quickly under the covers of night. And weeks and months are swept up before we know it into the translucent containers of memory.

On holiday we seem to pay more attention to things, don't we? I remember my first trip to Europe. My mind recorded all the little new subtleties. Smells and breezes. Steamed milk and colors of skin. Shadows blending with my own. Rain falling on cobblestones. Shades of birds’ voices and sounds of sky. The brightly colored squeak of a shaved door from a shadowy alleyway as I pass under a rusted and peeling sign which swings carelessly like a child in the wind of my imagination. I open a heavy door into a musty used book store where a stooped old man with hair sprouting from his ears and elbow patches on his worn corduroy jacket offers me a plastic cup of sherry to sip while I browse, even though it’s not really cold outside.

It doesn't take me long to figure out that I just can’t hold it all. The world is too big. So I carry a journal. And I use it. The journal is a see-through container.

What Makes You Happy?

The question was asked this morning.

I was in a foul mood and didn’t feel like giving it much consideration. I wanted to wallow. You know how it is. Don’t ask me to think about happy. Can’t you see I’m clearly not happy right now.

But what I discovered was, if I came up with only one thing, my mood changed. And it led to me thinking of other things that made me happy. Pretty soon, I’m thinking, my life is pretty good…
Of course, I went on about my day, having to do some things I didn’t really want to do. Resistence set in, and I began feeling shitty again. And wanting other people to feel shitty with me.

I don’t really want to feel shitty, or to be depressed, or resentful. None of those are things that make me happy. Neither though does chocolate ice cream, if instead of eating it, I’m sitting in the office on a Saturday having to work on a project I’d rather not have to do.

But, if I can put down the “rather be doing…” thought for just a minute. And remember siting on the couch with my honey, with two spoons and one pint of organic chocolate ice cream, then I start to feel better inside. Not because I want to be doing that. Because I have, I will, and more than that, it is something that exists. Something that I created out of happiness, for the sake of happiness, to return to happiness. It is a gift of happiness I put out there into the universe. And that gift remains. And the world is better because of it. I am better because of it. And maybe, it creates a happiness loop. Something I can step back into at will. By just remembering… ah, there it is… happy.

So, what makes you happy?