Taking the leap: happiness

credit: Linda Phelps, my awesome neighbor!

It's been a lot of woe in this blog lately.  It's been -- with the exception of pink hair Woah --  a lot of cancer and death.  Which is a day-to-day reality for us, and which, in so many ways, provides so much food for thought, so much impetus for words and growth and cookies.  It could be what makes us interesting at present, pulling in readers who want details, old friends who need to know.  It's the thing, perhaps, that makes our family unique just at the moment, considering how old man Tolstoy puts it at the start of Anna Karenina:  

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

The thing is that I've never been a huge fan of unhappy.  I know it can be so much more glamorous, in that smoldering misunderstood artist too good for this world kinda way.  Happy gets a bad rap, like only stupid people are happy.  Smart people, people who see what's really happening, are sad.

Whatever.  Just call me stupid.

In the midst of all this cancer and death unhappiness, I am remaining true to my core happiness, the unhappy passing like dark clouds in front of the sun of my essential nature, always shining even when it's raining.  At first I was going to write, "I am trying to remain true," but there is no try.  I just is.  There have been occasions in the last couple of months where I've almost reproached myself for still laughing, for still having fun.  

How can you laugh when you know I'm down?

- "I'm Down," The Beatles

Misery loves company, they say.  Gross.  Count me out.

Sad is a feeling.  Happy is a state.

- Me

Our best choice given the alternatives, our Best Choice every single time, is Happy.  It doesn't help my dying sister in any way for me to dampen my innate happiness, to keep a lid on it.  I'm not going into mourning any sooner than I need to, thanks, and even then, tell you what, I'll still be happy at the center, even while unhappy is blocking my own rays. And every time I go and visit her, while we're sitting there getting our mani-pedis this weekend, I'm bringing the sun with me.  If there's one thing I hope I taught my offspring, it's that happy is our job, the whole point of our being here.

Here's just one recent source of deep, deep happiness for me, this silly clip from Facebook, that place where I do a lot of my living and connecting:

My kid and his delightful girlfriend have just announced their relationship status. They're signing the lease on their new apartment together on Friday and can move in anytime after that.  They're starting this new chapter in their lives, in their life together, and I just want to jump around.

It makes me so profoundly happy that my son loves, that he is loved.  As a parent, I feel like I've done things right if he can be in the place he is right now -- loving and loved, setting up house, making a shared life.  Maybe my reaction is not normal -- I know that within the context of our own family, I'm not reacting the way my parents did to my or my sisters' choices when it came to boyfriends and "shacking up," as they derided it.  I always had the impression -- probably because I was told this over and over as a child -- that I couldn't possibly know what it was to love (they had the market cornered on that one, they used it all up), that no man could ever be as good as my father, that all my friends, especially boyfriends, were stupid and marginal.  Fortunately, I ignored their nonsense completely and just went boldly forward, where my heart led.  Even when I got hurt, it was all still worth it.  It's so much better to LOVE no matter what happens, to return always to the state of HAPPY, the real place where I live.

I might as well jump.

Go ahead and jump!

- "Jump," Van Halen.

Make your Leap Day about happiness, would you please?  Don't do it for me -- I'll be happy no matter what you do -- but do it for you.  Happy is not a feeling, it's a state. Move in with me, please!  I promise you won't regret it. 

XX