Hanging on (1)

Some people draw happiness from the physical world - material possessions, social standing, achievements, relationships. They seek instant gratification from the Happiness Dispensing Machine - happiness can be easily bought. (And apparently, happiness, weighing in at exactly 100 pounds, can also be bought in the form of Borders Chai. Heh.)

Some people draw happiness from illusions - and live happily ever after. Others are not so fortunate - their illusions fall apart and they flounder in the eternal greyness between dreams and reality, possibly for the rest of their life. Some become voiceless wraiths in the shadows. Others - bitter echoes in the wind.

Some people draw happiness from within - dreams; courage to believe; grace in spite of personal trials and setbacks; patience and faith to continue believing. And sometimes, they draw it from the happiness of others (Happy Trees and Lucky Bastards) and the world around them - and hope for themselves.

A few people draw happiness from the secrets of the Universe. They reach past the illusions of space and time, and finite possibilities, into the Greater Consciousness out there, greater than all six billion individual ones - into the void; the unseen; infinite possibilities.

And some people do not. Not necessarily for lack of dreams, nor inertia, nor that they do not have the patience to wait. Sometimes, in the long wait (and for some, one too many personal trials that they bear alone), they forget how easily laughter once came to them, when they drew upon the wonders in the ordinary and little things they see, hear, smell, touch and know.

Do we ever lose the ability to be happy, with time or age? Can personal trials cause us to lose that ability, irrevocably, to reach for happiness? How do we find what we have lost?

We often console ourselves that our Time has simply not arrived, and we can only wait patiently. And that quietens our restless hearts and souls - for a while - until we notice that everyone else seems to have had their turn, and gone back for seconds and thirds. And we are still trapped in the undifferentiated greys of our Sisyphian existence.

But perhaps the Time that we speak of should not be measured in terms of minutes, hours, days, months and years; nor in relation to other people's lives. In the greater scheme of things, Time - the quantifiable aspect that we are only too familiar with, and constantly reminded of (society's milestones) - is inconsequential.

Our personal trials, lessons, journeys and self-discoveries cannot be quantified; nor taken apart individually to consider on their own; to rage against with clenched fists and ineffectual voices. These are so much more when you step back and consider the bigger picture - of events, people, space and time. How often have we missed things that our limited mortal senses could not grasp in the moment itself, and it is only in retrospect that we, hopefully, see so much more clearly and understand?

Perhaps what should matter most is our soul.


Colours

If you had an aura, what colour would it be today?