This morning while I was watching the scenery flit by on the train, I wondered if complete and lasting happiness was truly possible. We all want to be happy but what does that mean exactly and how do you find it? Is it as Nathaniel Hawthorne described it to be the elusive butterfly that stays just beyond your grasp when you chase it but if you sit still in the grass it may alight upon you? I wondered today whether we pursue it so arduously that we become so absorbed in the chase that we never really find it – like the eternal bachelor who searches for the elusive perfect girl and never seems to find her and therefore remains the eternal bachelor.
So I resolved to actively refrain from trying to be happy – I decided that I would not actively look for reasons to be happy and wanted to see whether the butterfly of small blessings would visit me today.
A few hours later a friendly student poked his head around my office door to say goodbye before going back to his home country and gave me a traditional Turkish talisman and said it was a to be a “bereket” or “blessing”. It was one of those totally random moments but it made me sit up and take note – like my son pricks up his ears when he hears the ice-cream cart three streets down while the neighborhood dogs are still none the wiser.
It was something really small but given with so much gratitude and kindness for not doing too much at all. It is a small safety pin (no pun intended) with a glass Mal-de-Ojo and a small bunch of grapes attached to it. What moved me was the wish that accompanied it – it was a blessing for abundance (hence the grapes – as an image of plenty) and the Mal-de-Ojo (Evil Eye) is intended to ward off harm and danger. It came from the heart and was given with so much sincerity and I was really touched.
Perhaps there is something there – perhaps we are so focused on being able to proclaim as boldly as Martin Luther King – “I have a dream” that we forget to live in the now. Perhaps that is what causes the sense of panic and desolation when all the pilot lights on the dashboard suddenly go out and your coach turns into a pumpkin. We are left wondering – where to now?? What about my dream?
Perhaps we have to let go of the life we had planned so that we are able to accept the one that is waiting for us. It’s almost like standing in a corridor where all the doors have slammed shut and you are alone and in the dark. Which door will open – where do I go next when it is almost impossible to live in the present, feels ridiculous to live in the future (because your dream has just died), and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.
I have come to the conclusion that I am one of many who crucifies myself between two thieves – regret for the past and fear of the future. Fear can be your best friend or your worst enemy. If we are able to control it, it can serve you and make you more alert like a deer emerging from the forest. If not, it will cripple you and destroy you. In situations like this – I guess it is fear of the unknown, fear of loneliness, fear of failure and just basic uncertainty. Just feeling lost.This afternoon I came to the conclusion that everything in life is connected somehow. You may have to dig a little to find it, but it is there. There is a synchronicity and an inter-relatedness in the tapestry of life that defies explanation at times. Everything is the same even though it is different. Somehow everything connects back with your life and experience. The faces in some situations may be different but the situations are the same.
Irony is a hidden factor that lives around us, making its presence felt only after it has left the scene. If I think back – the situation is slightly different but everything in it still in some way cognate. In some wonderous way everything is interconnected to form the balance of life and create some divine structure.
I guess change is and always will be constant and inevitable. That is the only certainty as contradictory as it seems. But everything is relative and perhaps the moments and times in our lives will come back again but the next time round, we may find ourselves on the other side of the coin. Things are always changing as fast as everything stays the same.
Time is the only fluid dynamic which seems to be the balm for broken hearts and the solution to all the immediate concerns. We may not know the answers now but in TIME we may. Time is such a relative notion. Isn’t it strange how time can fly when you are really happy and having heaps of fun but it can drag when you are unhappy. Think of children waiting for Christmas morning – time seems to be interminably long. When we are children we can’t wait for the holidays, our next birthday, summer, growing up. Perhaps the reason for that is that a child surrenders his whole soul to each moment of a happy day. Do you – or are you torn between the thieves of regret and fear?
Maybe we shouldn’t aspire to proclaim – “I have a dream” but rather “I have a plan”. Perhaps we will get further with plans than we do with dreams. We can plan to find a way to conquer our fear and find courage – since courage is actually only fear that has said its prayers. So perhaps being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. Perhaps it just means looking beyond the imperfections and seeing the blessing in the safety pin given with an open heart and a beaming smile.
