Finding a needle in a haystack. Plucking your eyebrows when they are blond and you wear bifocals. Perfectly crispy French fries. A winning lotto ticket. Happiness and joy.
Elusive. Desired. Confounding. Fantasy.
You find them by learning better skills. You find it by trial and error. You find it by developing better tools. Tenacity. Audacity.
The key is to keep trying. But to have the will to keep trying, one must believe in joy and happiness. If faith in joy erodes or vanishes, then why try? And what exhausts that faith? And how is faith restored, replenished, rejuvenated, reborn?
How does one recover from a position of exhaustion? When worn to a frazzle, spent and empty, how to re-energize?
It is too easy to offer platitudes that one must have simple and pure faith that life is good. For that is untrue. Life is not always good. It can be mean and harsh and devastating. It can crush your faith in both God and Man. It can sow doubt and fear. But, is life to be abandoned?
Even the fatally morbid want to abandon the pain, escape the darkness, flee the crushing bleakness. And they may render their life to escape. But do they truly want to abandon life or just its harshness?
The recovery comes in a thousand – a million – or a singular thing. It can be a grand arrival of a new baby. A perfect piece of toast. Learning a new thing (there are creatures called tree kangaroos that live in cloud forests). Transferring awareness from one’s own sorrow to see another person’s battle.
Catharsis helps too. Let it out. Smash plates. Do a Forest Gump. Cry.
Forgiveness helps the most. And liberates you from the bondage of anger and bitterness. There is no revenge in forgiveness, no hidden punch or equalizing justice. Sometimes your life just sucks. But then, you recognize the awesome force of life that is life – even in the pain and the sorrow. For if one has the capacity to feel and learn and live….it is a choice to be. Be better. Be different. Be aware. Be open. And believe.
