STOP...how to make room for happy

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty to be happy.

By being happy we sow anonymous benefits on the world.

Robert Louis Stevenson

I don't usually do this - and to tell the truth - Blogger doesn't let you easily reblog someone else's post like WordPress does. But I thought this post was so important that I should pass it along with only a very little commentary (and not to bore you, but I do have another prose/poem to go with this topic!)

I've made the point before and will again in the poem below, that we choose who and how we'll "be" in the world. We can choose love or indifference, hope versus despair, optimism versus pessimism and happiness versus discontent or sadness. We can alter our stance toward life and others by our conscious desire and thoughts to do so. But...while I absolutely agree that we can change ourselves when we cannot necessarily change others or change the circumstances in which we find ourselves, there are, nonetheless, certain things we absolutely have to stop letting other people do to us if we are to even have a chance to choose happiness. In these cases, "choosing" happiness involves modifying our external circumstances at least in terms of how we allow others to create negative situations for us. Marc Chernoff in the blog "Marc and Angel Hack Life" has this list of 20 things to stop letting people do to you.  

And even though it's not up to other people to "make" us happy, it is entirely possible that we are allowing others to make it impossible for us to choose happiness. Check Chernoff's list to see if you're permitting anyone to get in the way of that choice for yourself. No one can be a victim who refuses to be one and Marc's advice is to absolutely refuse to let anyone treat you as if you are one. I think you'll find it a worthwhile read - if not for yourself, then perhaps for someone you care about who doesn't seem to be able to choose happiness. 

What is happiness you ask me? 

It may seem odd to approach 

such a seemingly easy subject from the negative, 

but it is easier to begin with what it is not. 

It’s not love – though it can lead to it or come from it. 

It’s not joy – which is a breathtaking kind of elation 

born of full awareness, 

an enlightened sense of the rare 

and unique beauty of the present moment. 

Happiness is not found “out there,” 

in the grasping after or ownership of things or persons. 

It’s not something earned or won like fame or fortune. 

It’s not some romanticized quality of life 

represented by trilling bluebirds or colorful rainbows. 

It’s not something you get; 

it’s something you are 

and something you choose.

Happiness, like love and joy, 

is a state of being one chooses for oneself 

regardless of circumstance or luck. 

It’s a softening and an opening 

of one’s heart and soul 

that empties them of dissatisfaction, 

sadness and regrets and makes room 

for love and joy to fill them up. 

It’s a kind of calmness rather than giddiness, 

peace of mind and spirit rather than elation. 

It’s a contented sigh rather than bawdy laughter. 

Happiness is a general cheerfulness about life 

and a gentle sense of satisfaction with who you are. 

It’s a stance, a posture we assume 

in the face of difficulty or hardship, 

a view of life as more good than bad, 

more hopeful than despairing.

Choose happiness...and then 

allow it to just be.

Are you mended with gold???

When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history, it becomes more beautiful - Billie Mobayed

 We Are Glass

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/we-are-glass-lianne-schneider.html

I've read in countless spiritual guides, self-help books, motivational guides that we are all "broken" in some way. Throughout the course of life, events conspire to break us - we suffer losses, disappointments, heartbreak, failure and sometimes what feels like endless struggle. Someone I love dearly is having a "breakdown" - that's what they call the loss of touch with reality that comes from a steady diet of psychological pain. Even if the situation is not so dire for us, we've all experienced moments, perhaps days or weeks when we felt just shattered by circumstances. But the question for me has always been whether being broken means broken down or broken open. There's a huge difference and I've written numerous poems about that thought over the past few years. It seems to me that if we are all broken in some way, what counts is how we put ourselves back together! 

What if we could see ourselves and others as perfectly imperfect...patched with the gold of the lessons we've learned and the vulnerability we've accepted without the shame that usually haunts us because we're "not good enough" or we're "weak" or "afraid?" What if we could see ourselves as more beautiful because we're damaged and imperfect and because we've been broken open by our suffering, exposing the deeper heart and soul of who we are and finding that lovelier than we ever knew was possible? What if we could accept our wounds as important and even possibly necessary aspects of our own "soul" development? (You don't have to believe in the religious definition of soul to understand what I mean but if you prefer, use spirit or heart or just plain human). What if we could accept that as Leonard Cohen wrote in the lyrics to Anthem, "There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in"?

"Pain is the great teacher," said writer May Sarton, so what if we could study the lessons and find the gold or the light that makes us more beautiful than ever. This is how I expressed it in the poem I wrote at the same time as I created this image:

IN THE SHATTERING

Shattered -
the fragile glass of me is shattered,
crushed and broken into tiny shards
now reflecting, diamond-like,
a thousand points of light -
magnifying what had once been
but a solitary beam, diffuse, opaque -
as if in the final breaking,
the small, soft, subtle glow,
so long and well contained within
the shape that was the whole of me
is now free to sparkle all the more -
brilliantly, blindingly more -
each crystal sliver multiplying
radiance only dimly shown before.

How could I have known
when I was whole and empty
that it would be in breaking
that I would shine so brightly,
be more luminously transparent,
with a glory all out of proportion
to the pain of the shattering itself?
How could I know that I held
a million different joys inside
just waiting for release?
How could I know that I
was never meant to confine
the light of the Divine inside
but was always and eternally
envisioned in the mind of God,
as each of us is truly meant,
to be at last its sacred shine?

                     Copyright Lianne Schneider 2014

All art and poetry unless otherwise noted is the intellectual and artistic property of Lianne Schneider and may not be copied, reprinted, reblogged in its entirey without the express permission of the author.