October 19, 2020
Having a conversation with an online friend.
“You can’t seek happiness. Happiness comes from doing the things you’re supposed to do,” he said. He said it twice, so I’d really hear it. I’m sad. He likes me. He wants to help. He doesn’t want me to be sad. I am grateful for his compassion.
I try on this notion, that if I were to simply do what I am supposed to do, happiness awaits. I look inside, at what I believe happiness to be. I don’t see that it comes from living in discipline and commitment to doing what is good and right. Living these truths does not dispel the sad.
Happiness, to me, is a fickle wafting breeze that blows through my mind and pushes out the dark of pain. It gives me respite from the constant sad, making it possible for me to smile; sometimes laugh. But that is it. It blows through, infrequently, and so briefly. And then the stillness of despair falls down upon me again, holding me in its thick murky paralyzing blanket of defeat.
Resistance breeds false hope. I fight to embrace the truth of the inside of me. Reconciliation to this pain is the only way I survive. I strive to release expectations. Hope dies slow and will not go easily. But I must rest in the truth of the illness that owns me or I will absolutely succumb to death.
I do not seek happiness. I seek the absence of sad, which is manifest in peace of mind. I do not want to soar above level. I want to attain and hold level.
I Persevere.
