Happiness
9 Apr
The Suitor
We lie back to back. Curtains
lift and fall,
like the chest of someone sleeping.
Wind moves the leaves of the box elder;
they show their light undersides,
turning all at once
like a school of fish.
Suddenly I understand that I am happy.
For months this feeling
has been coming closer, stopping
for short visits, like a timid suitor.Jane Kenyon
A colleague shared this beautiful Jane Kenyon poem with me. It got me thinking about the nature of happiness and what often seems like our never ending quest for it.
I remember for years, wondering when I would be happy. I was waiting for happiness to arrive, and it always seemed to be contingent on something else – the right relationship, finishing my masters degree, earning a certain amount of money, losing 10/20/30 pounds.
When any of the things I thought would yield happiness came, there would be a brief sense of accomplishment and excitement, quickly followed by a feeling of disappointment as I realized that I still wasn’t happy. I always attributed it to the fact that I’d been mistaken. I guess the degree wasn’t the thing that would bring me happiness, it must the relationship. And so I would recommence my wait for happiness to arrive on my doorstep.
After a while I started to feel as if it was never coming and in fact, I started to worry that I wouldn’t even know how to recognize if and when it did come.
Recently, its dawned on me that I was over complicating the issue. (more…)
