The Power We’ve Always Had
Sometimes, when I find I’m too happy, a defence mechanism kicks in, protecting me from the perils of knowing what it’s like to be quite as happy, so as to cushion the blow of normalcy paling in comparison thereafter.
It manifests at times by gathering up dormant fears and tossing them in the air like a child in autumn; other times, it heightens my pinsharp awareness of Signs of Trouble, also known as Mountainous Molehill Reality Checks and slaps me in the face idly with them.
In the past, I have to say I thrived in these moments of fear and brooding. If anything, it was good fodder for new songs and poetry—nothing you’d want to read, though. It’s almost as if I were happy in my occasionally reaching out to caress the face of sadness, because at least it was familiar. It also put my happiness in positive context, contrasted against its Other.
But it also put the fear of losing it right in my hands—the ones tracing the outline of old sadness, and raising the stakes beyond intention.
People say only you have the power to make yourself happy. And secure. And confident. It’s just that it seems like a lot of work when it has to be done singlehandedly.
Perhaps the good news then, however, is that happiness was never out of reach. And I mean true happiness, not just the absence of the unhappy. And you’ve always had the power to make it completely yours, just because only you could, to begin with.
With everything getting better and better, I owe it to myself to be immersed—no, completely submerged—in you, your happiness and your love. I owe it to us, really. Better and better, on.
i know this has nothing to do with your post, but if you have 45mins to spare and don’t mind watching badly sync-ed video, go my blog or youtube and watch Harold Pinter’s Nobel Laureate Speech, which starts about his art and quickly becomes a raging diatribe against the invasion of iraq. stick around if you can for his pablo neruda reading which is devastating.
thank you for writing what i have trouble putting down in words.
Beautifully said - “reaching out to caress the face of sadness, because at least it was familiar” is achingly familiar to me as well.
I think that “defence mechanism” is quite useful - it’s always worth remembering that good times pass; that life is always going to be up and down and it is in our hands to face both with equanimity.
I agree with Balaji,
to me happiness is like the tide; it ebbs and flows.
The only difference in that we actually have control over it. But sometimes the waves of one or the other will just flood over us taking it out of our hands.
Hence, it should be best to make the most of the tide we are given. So go…be happy. Submerge yourself in Love and enjoy each moment that you are given. But let not the memory of un-happiness fade too far back in your mind….
For it is the bad times that teach us to truly appreciate the good times. Like how a man who has never seen the ocean will better enjoy the view of a sunset over the water, than the sailor who sees it every day.
Falchion: Profound dawg. You smokin’ somthin’ Miyagi?