On the state of the world

There are days, sometimes days on end, when it’s difficult to accept the first sentence of the last stanza of Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata: “And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” This is one of those days, embedded in one of those times. Of course, that assessment presumes I know how things should be compared to how they are. I don’t know. I only know how, with my limited knowledge and perspective, I think they should be, or, more precisely, how I would like them to be.

Waaayy back in my younger days, the guys I hung around with frequently argued about whether it was better, once you got into a fight and were winning, to try to beat the hell out of your opponent so they never wanted to mess with you again, or, to instead give your opponent a sporting opportunity too say “enough,” and perhaps win a friend rather than a perpetual enemy. I believe those arguments are continuing to this day because, in part, those outcomes depend as much on your opponent’s world view as on yours. Neville Chamberlain or Winston Churchill?

happiness is a friend who loves you

Photo by J. Harrington

One of the reasons Desiderata is such worthwhile guidance is that it focuses on helping us attain an all too rare condition in the world these days, happiness, or the striving to attain it. So, for today’s posting the key concept is found in these questions: Do you know what it is that really makes you happy? How did you learn that?

Something I first read many years ago relates to happiness in a different way, especiallly for those of us who have a tendency to focus primarily on goals. 

“Happiness is to be found along the way, not at the end of the road, for then the journey is over and it is too late. Today, this hour, this minute is the day, the hour, the minute for each of us to sense the fact that life is good, with all of its trials and troubles, and perhaps more interesting because of them.”

― Robert Updegraff 

Happiness

By Jane Kenyon

There’s just no accounting for happiness,

or the way it turns up like a prodigal

who comes back to the dust at your feet

having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?

You make a feast in honor of what

was lost, and take from its place the finest

garment, which you saved for an occasion

you could not imagine, and you weep night and day

to know that you were not abandoned,

that happiness saved its most extreme form

for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never

knew about, who flies a single-engine plane

onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes

into town, and inquires at every door

until he finds you asleep midafternoon

as you so often are during the unmerciful

hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.

It comes to the woman sweeping the street

with a birch broom, to the child

whose mother has passed out from drink.

It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing

a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,

and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots

in the night.

                     It even comes to the boulder

in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,

to rain falling on the open sea, 

to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

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