Good Morning, Sweet Baby,
I'm just getting home from dropping Pearl off at Golden Agers. I saw your posts this morning. The first one had me rechecking the Middleton weather report, lol. I didn't know if you meant the Polar Vortex was back, or if you just liked the photo, but I see that the temp there is 44 degrees, according to weather.com, so I guess that's not too bad. It's a good picture, though, and I know you have taken your own photos of icicles including the excellent one on your FB cover. You also took those pics of the stalagmites last summer.
Your other post was Brooke Shaden's photo of the desert. Sand dunes and sunset. So, you had two opposite ends of the spectrum: arctic and desert. Whether or not you were making a weather comment (now there's a pun for you; whether & weather - get it?......nudge, nudge) I also read her commentary in the accompanying blog. I've read her comments before, and she has a lot of insight, I think.
She certainly is right in saying that it all boils down to what makes you happy in life, and it's all just a process of identifying those things. You always know what they are, because when you are doing something that truly makes you happy, it seems as if everything else disappears, all the day-to-day preoccupations we all have with ordinary things. I can remember specific days like that. When I discovered Corriganville, for instance. That was last November. When I got there, and discovered those trees (like the one in my FB profile pic), and the way the light was shining, and the sense that I was the only one in the enormous park, it was like everything else just disappeared.
Anything else I may have been thinking about was gone. And it was replaced by this feeling of what I will call Energized Tranquility. "Tranquility", to borrow Brooke Shaden's word. But I was also suddenly energized in a way that can only come about through creative inspiration. All of a sudden, I felt this connection to the park, the trees, the light, and it was like an energy switch went on inside me. "Man, this is perfect. I got here at the perfect time, the light is amazing, there's no one else here, and now I am capturing it".
There was a sense of enchantment, and to say that means you cannot have a cynical bone in your body. You know me - I look for the Spirit in everything - even rocks, and I believe that enchantment can be felt when you are creatively inspired, and you are in a place that is trying to inspire you. As if it was waiting for you to arrive so it could show you something.
I got off the track there, cause I was initially talking about happiness and tranquility, but that is one example of a time when I am in such a Tranquil Zone. Another way to describe it, is that all of a sudden, you feel like the Real You.
And, it doesn't always have to be when you are being creative. I feel the same way when I'm at Disneyland, for instance. The entire outer world just disappears. Or late at night, when I am writing to you and listening to piano music. So I know, without having to analyze it, that those things make me truly happy. And of course there are others, such as when I am reading a book that blows my mind. Brooke Shaden lists her things, too.
The one thing I guarantee you is true, is that it gets easier and easier, week by week, month by month, year by year, to boil things down in life to where you are doing your Happy Things most of the time. Many of my own, as I've remarked, are just small things. I feel I was lucky (some might question this) in that I was never driven by anxiety over materialistic success or social standing in the world. Instead, I always felt there was an inner voice that was trying to tell me something. I really didn't know what that was until I was in my mid-30s, and I still don't fully understand it, but I try to follow it's mystery. One thing I did know, early on (and I've remarked about this many times), is that I had a desperate fear of unhappiness, of being stuck in any situation where I was doing something I really didn't want to do. Now, I don't mean like washing the dishes or raking the leaves. We all have chores and obligations in life. No, I am talking about the kind of unhappiness that brings dread. And for me, of course it was the corporate world and trying to fit into all that. I remember once, when I was 21, I was working the morning shift at the Lab (Metrocolor). Morning shift was very early - 4am to 12:30pm. You had to go to bed by 8 or 8:30, when the night was just getting started, and you had to wake up at 3am to get ready and get to work by 4. And I remember one time, I was outside the Lab, at the coffee truck, at 5:30am, for our first break. And it was still dark out, and cold, and I had my jacket on, drinking hot coffee on an empty stomach to try and wake up, and I saw all the faces of the guys who'd been working that shift for years, and they looked burned to a crisp. And it was only 5:30 in the morning, and I still had almost a full day of work ahead, and it was dark and cold, and my biorhythms were all out of whack from getting up at 3am, and I just said to myself : "I've gotta get out of here".
I've never forgotten that day, or the memory of sitting in the darkness out by that coffee truck, because it wasn't mere unhappiness (like being stuck in traffic, say). No, it was sheer dread.
I of course quit the Lab not long after that. In hindsight, there were many good aspects about working at Metrocolor, but nothing good about that shift, and also in hindsight, it wouldn't have mattered if I'd stayed on the easy-as-pie afternoon shift. It would have burned me out completely to make a career out of that.
So, the point of all of that story was that before I knew what really made me happy, I knew what made me unhappy, and I eliminated it. But that's just my example. There are many. And, the only example that's right for you is your own. But my Darling, you can trust and believe me 100% (and I'll give you your money back if it isn't true!), is that if you just continue to follow your innermost instincts, and your heart, you are going to be happy. You are going to have a happy life, a creative life. And sometimes, that happiness will just be something very simple, like watching your favorite TV show with your husband (hint, hint) ala Brooke Shaden. Other times it will be doing something creative. But you will get to a good place in your life where you have identified all your happiest things, and eliminated the rest.
Remember that Intent is everything, and so is Gratitude. God (in whatever way you believe in God) likes gratitude, not because He's arrogant or demanding, but just because He likes to know that something is making you happy! It's simple really.....
Me at Corriganville : "Man, this place is incredible"!
Then, later that night : "Thank you Lord, for this wonderful day". Etc., etc.
And then God puts more Corriganvilles in your path, and all kinds of other cool things, too.
Well, I got off on a few tangents there, and now I am gonna jump in the shower and then go pick up Pearl at 2pm, but I just wanted to offer a few thoughts on your posts. I'll be back later.
I Love You, Elizabeth! You are an Awesome and Wonderful Lady. I thank God for you, every day.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
11:05 : Sorry I didn't check in earlier this evening. I was just a little tired from re-adjusting to the work hours again, so I took a short nap when I got home, then my walk. Now I am listening to more Brahms. To add a few more thoughts to what I was writing about earlier, I think that because we are both not only intelligent people, but also emotionally connected to something very deep, we are always questing. And so, we have a great desire to bypass all the surface-level stuff in life that we find tedious. Life in America (and the rest of the world really, in the computer age) is geared toward average thinking at best. People of high intelligence are of course going to want to steer clear of mainstream stuff because of that.
I've said this before, too, but I think people like us have one foot in this world, the three dimensional one, and another, possibly more grounded foot in the greater World outside our five main senses. To be plain about it, we sense very strongly that something infinite is in the works. We sense this even without any outside sources telling us so; i.e. religion, et al. We sense it inside ourselves and we have never needed anyone's confirmation of it. We know there is something big going on in life, something very long lasting, and so we follow it, very gradually, slowly but surely.
Along the way, we lose interest in a lot of ordinary stuff, but not all, because we do have one foot in this world, the three dimensional one. So we do like simple pleasures - a nice dinner, a sunset, a visit with friends......we like grander pleasures, too: traveling, achievement, success.
We love being human, i.e. living in three dimensions.
But still we know that something more is going on. And even at times when we aren't consciously aware of it, we are nevertheless focused on that grander scheme in a subconscious way.
That is our real preoccupation. That mystery, that long term.......goal?
I'm not sure it is a goal. What if you were to live infinitely? Surely, to reach any kind of goal would bring an end to that. It would no longer be infinite. Happiness lies, for us types of people, in the Constant Quest For Discovery. There can be "goals" (plural) along the way, but never one ultimate goal.
I will post now, to avoid further tangents, but I wanted to add these thoughts.
I Love You, my Angel. xoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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