When Things Get Hard

 

Life gets tough at times.  Difficult.  There are many reasons that things are so...challenging...and no way to explain to others how or why that might be.

One can point to physical injury, or emotional turmoil, or the state of the world but it's difficult to really know or understand the toll of the baggage someone is carrying around.  Even if you have your own baggage, your own weight.  

Facebook does this thing where it will notify you of when a friend is having a birthday.  A number of years ago I stopped wishing people a happy birthday and instead just sent them a note saying 'have a happy'.

Because life isn't always 'happy'.  Sometimes people are grieving a loss (of something or someone) and happiness seems impossible, especially happiness at a life event where the missing someone isn't there to share in it.

I watched my mother go through the loss of her husband (my father), and did not truly understand the enormity of the life change she was enduring.  Of course I was, at the same time, mourning the loss of my father, dealing with my own grief.

At the time I made the change in my 'wishes' I was going through my own challenges and being 'happy' was a fleeting thing.  But no matter how dark the clouds, how impossible it seemed to be happy for even an entire day, I knew deep down that I could comb through the wreckage of my thoughts and remember that there were still nuggets of 'happy' to be found.

White roses on a local walking path.  The 'rainbow' cast on my floor and walls when the sun hit the fan light in my front door just 'so'.  Managing to create a cloth that met my expectations, sometimes even exceeding them.

They were fleeting moments, but they could be found nonetheless.

As we dig in for another year of covid (no, it's NOT over - not for some of us, no matter what the talking heads might be telling us) I have been struggling with a whole bunch of things.  Things that I have very little control over, but am doing my level best to mitigate.

As I scroll through Facebook, I very much collect the little nuggets of delight I see - this morning a tiny finger puppet dancing, a poem by Mary Oliver.  

They don't erase the pain I am having, both physical and emotional (for reasons), but for a moment or two I feel - if not exactly 'happy' - a tiny frisson of contentment.  That I am still here.  Still able to weave albeit at a much slower pace.  I can try to help people learn about weaving.  I can still think and even change my mind about things.  This last - changing the way I think about things - isn't easy, isn't comfortable, but once I've let go of old approaches, old thought patterns, I feel I see more clearly.  And at my age, that's not a bad thing.

So yes, life IS hard.  No, it's isn't always possible to be 'happy' all the time.  But I can keep rooting through my brain box and find little pieces of happy that light up my life, even if it is only for a moment or two.