The Inconvenience of Happiness

So today is Sunday, which, according to my blog schedule, is my rant day.

And hoo boy, am I in the mood to rant.

Just kidding.

Today I am just in too good a mood to think of anything I disagree with. I just don't have it in me to be incensed today.

That got me thinking about art, and about how so often, pain and anger is the impetus for creativity. Artists store up their loneliness, their sense of being constantly misunderstood and under appreciated. Every heart break, every leaky faucet, every humiliating moment, goes into this deep well of angst and fury, and that's what we draw from in order to create.

Creative people never had happy childhoods.

Throughout history, great artistic minds have been tortured and miserable. Beethoven, suffering in deafness even as he composed gorgeous, timeless music. Van Gogh, going insane and chopping his ear off and never getting the recognition he deserved while he was alive. Emily Dickinson, scribbling away in her room and living and dying alone and unseen. Sylvia Plath and Virgina Woolf, genius and depressed and suicidal.

Nobody ever wrote anything worthwhile when they were happy.

But still.

But still, the sun shines and it's a gorgeous California day, and the yard is full of flowers even though there's a drought.

My mom's garden, photo by yours truly.

And there is goodness in people-- free sectional couch! People, on the whole, are getting less bigoted and less likely to torture one another!

And there is goodness in animals-- our Momma kitty has adopted an orphan baby squirrel! And he rides her like a pony.

And sometimes it seems like there just aren't as many ways to be sad as there are to be happy. 

There's the particular kind of happiness that can only come from a warm Sunday afternoon spent in the company of family, with the scents of roses and sun-warmed strawberries (and just the faintest hint of horse) wafting over a bright porch on a soft breeze. 

There's a specific kind of joy in being just at that place in your life where you really have no idea what's going to happen next, and you maybe should be panicking, but really you're just enjoying the stillness before you have to make those decisions and face those problems.

Maybe I will never write anything genius or inspired when I'm happy. Maybe I will have to content myself with fading away into a sappy obscurity, forever the writer of Hallmark-level platitudes and sappy poems that should never see the light of day.

But maybe there's a beauty in being happy, too. Maybe we glorify sadness, and insanity, and gloom, because we think unhappy people are more intelligent. When you look into a well, it's dark and deep, because the light can't penetrate the shadows. But if you lowered a light into the well, it would still be just as deep, wouldn't it? Just a little brighter.

All of which is to say, don't stop taking me seriously just because I'm in a good mood.

Seriously, look how pretty our garden is. Can you blame me?