When Happiness is an Inside Job

Sidling up to Grace

Feeling happy makes no sense. It’s not logical, given the way things are right now, for me to feel happy, but I do. So maybe it’s not about logic or reason. I shouldn’t be happy when the world I know is tumbling down around me. When everything is upside down. When practicing racism, hatred, greed, censorship, and xenophobia are all the rage. When our rights: queer, abortion, and the most basic civil ones are crumbling right before my eyes, before your eyes.

When the world I held some trust in seems to have all but disappeared.

Just recently the ground beneath my feet felt more solid. Now it seems to have turned to shifting gravel or quicksand and threatens to give way to enormous sink holes at every step, threatening to take me under as I walk mindfully––and yes, a bit fearfully––into my future.

With all that, I wake up each morning, snuggle into my soft flannel sheets, pull my down comforter over my head, and nestle more deeply into my pillows. Daylight creeps in through the crack at the bottom of my window shades, forcing me to greet the day because when I ordered them, I measured wrong and I was too lazy to re-measure and reorder. Am I not worth a re-measure, a reorder? The blinds weren’t expensive. Or does it just not matter so much in the great scheme of things? I often wonder what life would be like if there was nothing to complain about. I fret about it most days and then I laugh at myself.

I take an extra minute or two before I sit up to launch myself into the day, not wanting to give up that cozy sweet spot under the covers. You know the one. Where there’s a feeling of such great balance and weightlessness that you don’t move a muscle, because the position you’re in is perfect, and a part of you wants to stay like this forever because it just feels SO delicious.

But other delicious things await me, so I get up feeling a measure of excitement mixed with morning sleepiness. I am not one of those people who bolt from bed with enthusiasm and energy. I’ve never understood those people. It takes me a bit to get going. The things that await me? Ah, that first cup of coffee and the utter joy of watching my dogs run back into the house from their first pee of the day so they can devour breakfast with as much verve as if they’d never eaten before and have just discovered a marvelous secret no one had let them in on. This thing called food. Huzzah! Food! It happens like that every single day, twice a day. Life is entirely new. I’d love to feel THAT excited about my daily meals. I don’t wag my tail nearly as much when I sit down to eat my breakfast.

My cup of coffee in hand, I sit back in my recliner, open my laptop and spend the next two glorious hours enjoying my mostly set-in-stone routine before the official start of my day, the one that involves contact with people. I begin with the crossword puzzles, Mini and Maxi; the Spelling Bee, Wordle, Connections, and Strands. I’ve been doing them for years, and they’re mandatory. Nothing else happens until they’re finished. I’ve tried to change the order of operations––mix it up––but it can get ugly, downright disorienting. I enjoy the comforts of my slow morning routine. I count on it. Routine gives structure and stability to my life. I’m not so spontaneous, so devil-may-care anymore. Next, a quick trip through social media and morning reads on Substack. Then, I skim what reliable news I can find (that’s hard lately…because you know). I don’t read as much news as I used to. Not for lack of interest or willful ignorance––but for the sweet preservation of my sanity, my peace. So far, it’s a pretty great day.

Every morning at 9am, I zoom to my recovery meeting. It’s a meeting that’s changed my life, shifted my worldview, and taught me that there’s more to know with my heart than I’ll ever, ever be able to comprehend with my mind. The meeting, the program is teaching me to be unafraid of the unknown. This is important. I’m learning to stand with my feet firmly planted in the present. To––eek––start believing in a power greater than myself? Some people in my meeting refer to that power as God. I call her Grace. It is not-so-coincidentally the meaning of my first name.

It's taken me a while to get here, and I’m still in the early stages of trying it on, this concept of faith, of Grace. And for now, I’m willing to try it on, grateful to have people to guide me as I wander this unfamiliar terrain. I’m starting to recognize that powerful magic happens when I let go of needing to “know.” When I let go of needing to define, control, or rationalize something that exists beyond my ken––that’s when my world opens to me in ways I can barely define. I’m beginning to accept that not knowing all the answers is not only okay, it empowers me to let go of some rigid ideas about the way things are “supposed to be.” Learning and accepting that there’s very little I can control beyond my own actions gives me space to grow, to experiment and to see others with a softer heart. That’s hard and very frustrating at times, because DAMN, things are ugly right now.

If I give into feeling that I have no control AND I’m helpless then I start feeling hopeless. And my anxiety levels soar. If I acknowledge that it’s true, that I have no control BUT I’m not helpless, I can move in a different direction.

I remind myself “Stay where your feet are!”

If I start catastrophizing about what I have no control over or worrying about the future, I’ll wind up in a psych ward. Not interested. I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and I won’t ever go that route again. We all need to get behind each other and inspire each other and remember WE ARE NOT ALONE. It doesn’t mean doing nothing. To me, it means maintaining perspective.

When I stay in touch with hope then my life takes on new meaning, and my fear decreases. Where does the hope come from? It comes from a place of deep wisdom, an inner source––not a place of facts and figures, of statistical probabilities or proven theories or hypothetical what-ifs. Is that source what I call Grace? Could be. I think so. I’ve seen too much beauty in my lifetime to think that this all happened by accident. This planet, the animals and nature, human beings. If that was an accident, wow, what a truly impressive mistake. And yes, there are rotten things happening every day. As far as I can tell, there’ve always been rotten things happening. Always. And there’s always been beauty. Don’t be misled, I’m not in denial about how dire this situation feels.

This morning when I woke up, I wasn’t in that luscious place, I felt sad and very, very tired. I reflected on what I’d written so far in this essay. I said to myself, “how can I publish this, is it even my truth or is this me pretending there’s not an enormous elephant in the room? Am I kidding myself?” Then I remembered, it’s perfectly appropriate to experience a multitude of feelings at the same time. I have a choice. That choice has to do with how I carry myself through whatever comes next. I intend to walk through this time imbued with Grace. Fueled by Grace. Propelled by Grace. I intend to share my light, my love, my ideas, my laughter, my moments of rage and my tears with those I love and those I will encounter and come to love.

And when I bump up against something or someone who challenges my sense of right and wrong, when that brings up feelings of hatred or fear, I don’t know how I’ll respond. Right now, it’s hard for me to hold love in my heart for the people who’ve chosen a path I could never walk. There’s a part of me that wishes them ill. And that part of me? That part of me still needs to do a lot of work. And so I turn to Grace––my new companion––and ask for wisdom and patience.

My definition of Grace wiggles and morphs, and doubts come up regularly and when I set some time aside to be with her I feel awkward and silly, and I tell her that. She giggles softly at my shyness, my reticence and then I giggle, too. The other day a friend was sharing about how’s she feeling these days, challenged and unsure, but still present. She mentioned sidling up to god. Tentative, but willing. I love that image and I’m holding it close.

What I imagine is a warm hug, the kind a loving parent wraps their child in, the kind that makes a child feel safer than they’ve ever felt before.

And now, just like that warm flannel comforter I snuggle into every morning and every night, I snuggle in to Grace. And Grace snuggles me back.

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