Be Happy

I love Facebook. I really do.

Maybe it's because my friends are so diverse...maybe it's because I get to learn so many new cool things that my smart friends post, laugh at the things my humorous friends, post...

Today there was a post from a page that focuses on how to make a better life. The quote was something like "Change your thoughts and change the world".

If you can believe this, one commentator was really rather pissy about it. He said basically that if you're poor/abused/trafficked/exploited/working for no pay that it's impossible to change your thoughts and change the world. Did I say already that he was a bit pissy?

Now, I'm a bit of a Pollyanna-ist and I try my hardest to be happy, even whilst plopped in the middle of a streaming pile of poop, and I'll tell you this. If I couldn't control my mind and my thoughts and decide that I deserved to be happy, I'd still be in that big pile of poop. What "pissy" people miss when they respond so virulently to those quotes is that nobody EVER gets out of those situations and stays out if they have a defeatest attitude.

I would like to ask him and the others I've heard with a similar criticism of "happy thoughts" what dire situations their kind of thinking has saved them from. My guess is that the list would be sort.

Defeatest, victim thinking never wins. It may get a person through a battle, but it won't win the war. One thing I think that people who feel like that miss is that being happy does not in any way imply acceptance. A person can be happy and still mad as hell.  How?

Because they decide to be happy about what they can be happy about (breathing, an opportunity to make a difference, being able to walk, having an amazing child, etc.) and they use the good energy of gratitude to tirelessly and with great effort make the world better by being kind.

Jogging is good for health. I know that, but if you see me running, you better run, too because that means I'm being chased by a wild alien and an attack is eminent!

Just kidding, but bear with me.

How many joggers have you seen smiling and looking happy? When we pass them on the street, don't they usually have a face of pain and anguish? I respect joggers, but frankly, a jogger in action is no advertisement to jump on the road and run along, too.

Life can be like that. When I was little, our pastor was a dour man. He rarely smiled, and when he did, it seemed somehow cynical and rather cold. When our religious leaders are always so somber and even a bit cold, does it make other people want to join in and "get religious"? I have to guess a big no on that one.

Being happy doesn't mean to ignore the world's ills. It doesn't mean to live in a fantasy land where nothing bad ever happens, but what it means is that there's something more. There's something that can put a smile on our faces IN SPITE OF.

Hope. Love. Faith. Something.

The first thing we have to do is know that it's worth it. Life is worth it. The blessing of being here is worth it.
Being happy doesn't mean that you don't care.

It means the opposite. It means that you do care.

Life is hard enough. Our hearts don't have to be, too.

We don't have to love the ills of the world. We don't have to accept them, but...

...we have to love ourselves and others at least enough to not add to the list.