Last week I read something, just one phrase actually, on my twitter stream. It said, "allow happiness". I clicked over to the link and read a short little article about happiness being our natural state and that we need to let go of the expectation to be stressed and miserable, which is our culture's natural state.
Allow happiness. I can't get that phrase out of my mind. I got to thinking about the act of being happy, and the fact that it really is only me that can make/allow that to happen, the happy.
The word allow is such a profound way of thinking about happiness. It is such an unobtrusive act, to allow something. It feels like a giving in, a form of acceptance, an opening up to. Is allowing something the same as quelling what had been a fight against the same thing?
I'm not saying I haven't been happy, it's just that I have never ever been this happy. So sometimes I find myself doubting my good fortune, worrying that all of this new found happiness is somehow unreal, too good to be true, and wondering when I am going to wake up to the familiar pains and struggles that were my twenties.
Yesterday, it snowed for about thirty minutes. MyGirl and I were in the middle of cleaning her cyclone of a bedroom together and of course she wanted to go play out in the snow. I didn't have the heart to deny her snow when it is such a rare occurrence here in the Portland area.
So out she went into the snow, while I was busy being frustrated about all the weekends MyGirl had said she was cleaning her room when really she was shoving fabric, art supplies, polly pockets, and Archie comics under her bed and under her couch.
Then I remembered that phrase, "allow happiness". I ran upstairs and pulled on a winter coat and hat and slipped on my puddle jumpers. And, we were both incredibly happy out in the snow together.
I drew the words in my sketchbook, as a way to etch them into my mind.
