Day 16: Being Happy
There's a really great song by a great and weird band, My Brightest Diamond, which goes, "When you're happy, you don't even know you're happy; when you're not, you know."
And I think this is a great line. I think it's a great song, about privilege and inequality and social levels.
But while the line is good and poetic and, I'm sure, in many cases absolutely true... I don't find that this is the case for me. In fact, I am very aware of the times when I'm happy.
When I'm sitting in the back seat of the car and my whole family is in the car, my dad driving, my mom (usually napping) in the front seat, my siblings in the back with me. I look out the window at the sun going down through the trees and at the clouds like cotton balls scattered through the sky, turning pink and orange and gold, and I feel it. "Suffuse" is the word, like hot water seeping through a tea bag. Happiness.
When I have a moment of perfect stillness, and it's so quiet I forget to listen for anything, and for a moment I have the sublime pleasure of not being me, but being aware of the way that I am not separate from what surrounds me, but am blended, all of the molecules made up of the same mostly-nothing.
When I'm reading a book and the tension is just right, the conflict is rising, and it's getting so intense that I have to stop for a moment and go suffuse a tea bag for a while, to remind myself that it's not real. But at the same time, I know it is real, as real as anything I experience.
When I'm having a conversation with a friend, and we both agree how nice it is to be having a conversation, and with each other, and are in perfect accord that we are the lucky ones.
When I am so lost in the story I am telling that I forget that these are words and I am a typist; instead, I am in the room, watching these people, listening to the timbre of their voices, hushed or shouting, watching their battles, treasuring their peace, feeling the soot of their city between my fingers--these are the good moments, when I stop being the maker of the story and become the conduit, the messenger. The way it's supposed to be, the way that feels good, in a place beyond obsessing about syntax and word choice--the writer place, a hard place to get to when you know as much about grammar and fact-checking as I do.
It turns out, I had forgotten what happiness felt like. It was the unhappiness that crept up on me, disguised as adulthood. Because we do what we have to do. We're practical people. We get it done. And yeah, sometimes we cry on the way to work every morning because what has to be done is so draining, so soul-crushingly moronic and fluorescently lit. Sometimes we swallow all our words because it's not about us right now, this is someone else's day, someone else's time to shine, and all those eaten words sit heavy in our bellies and they always taste like being ashamed of wanting more. Sometimes we give up on even looking for beauty, because the contrast between that and what our lives really look like might just crush the last spark of will we have left.
But sometimes, the sun rises and the sky, for one moment, looks like a sheet of candy. Sometimes, on a cold night, there is a cat to curl up on your feet. Sometimes, the people you love shock you with a gesture so full of love, your body can't contain it, and you spill over just thinking about it. Sometimes the words come back, and they aren't just words, thank God, thank God--they bring the pictures back, and the voices, and the stories are dragged along too.
Sometimes, you get to be happy.
When I'm happy, I know I'm happy.
And right now, I'm happy.
And I think this is a great line. I think it's a great song, about privilege and inequality and social levels.
When I'm sitting in the back seat of the car and my whole family is in the car, my dad driving, my mom (usually napping) in the front seat, my siblings in the back with me. I look out the window at the sun going down through the trees and at the clouds like cotton balls scattered through the sky, turning pink and orange and gold, and I feel it. "Suffuse" is the word, like hot water seeping through a tea bag. Happiness.
When I have a moment of perfect stillness, and it's so quiet I forget to listen for anything, and for a moment I have the sublime pleasure of not being me, but being aware of the way that I am not separate from what surrounds me, but am blended, all of the molecules made up of the same mostly-nothing.
When I'm reading a book and the tension is just right, the conflict is rising, and it's getting so intense that I have to stop for a moment and go suffuse a tea bag for a while, to remind myself that it's not real. But at the same time, I know it is real, as real as anything I experience.
When I'm having a conversation with a friend, and we both agree how nice it is to be having a conversation, and with each other, and are in perfect accord that we are the lucky ones.
When I am so lost in the story I am telling that I forget that these are words and I am a typist; instead, I am in the room, watching these people, listening to the timbre of their voices, hushed or shouting, watching their battles, treasuring their peace, feeling the soot of their city between my fingers--these are the good moments, when I stop being the maker of the story and become the conduit, the messenger. The way it's supposed to be, the way that feels good, in a place beyond obsessing about syntax and word choice--the writer place, a hard place to get to when you know as much about grammar and fact-checking as I do.
It turns out, I had forgotten what happiness felt like. It was the unhappiness that crept up on me, disguised as adulthood. Because we do what we have to do. We're practical people. We get it done. And yeah, sometimes we cry on the way to work every morning because what has to be done is so draining, so soul-crushingly moronic and fluorescently lit. Sometimes we swallow all our words because it's not about us right now, this is someone else's day, someone else's time to shine, and all those eaten words sit heavy in our bellies and they always taste like being ashamed of wanting more. Sometimes we give up on even looking for beauty, because the contrast between that and what our lives really look like might just crush the last spark of will we have left.
But sometimes, the sun rises and the sky, for one moment, looks like a sheet of candy. Sometimes, on a cold night, there is a cat to curl up on your feet. Sometimes, the people you love shock you with a gesture so full of love, your body can't contain it, and you spill over just thinking about it. Sometimes the words come back, and they aren't just words, thank God, thank God--they bring the pictures back, and the voices, and the stories are dragged along too.
Sometimes, you get to be happy.
When I'm happy, I know I'm happy.
And right now, I'm happy.
I'm happy you're happy! You are definitely LOVED!!!
ReplyDeleteI read this out loud to my husband. He was like, "That was so great! Who wrote that?" And I said, "Emily." And he was like, "WHAT? That's really good. It made me drowsy with happiness." ^_^ We are continually impressed by you!
ReplyDelete"We are continually impressed by you!" Truer word, never spoken.
ReplyDelete