Happiness, I was thinking today, while floating
in its midst, is such a simple thing. And yet
how hard we work to find it; how we make it
so complex. I laughed. It was either that, or cry.
It was so plain, in this silken moment, that
happiness isn’t something you strive to obtain
as much as something into which you relax.
We don’t increase our experience of it
by adding more things, or drama, or complications
to our lives, but by releasing the things that stand in its way.
We don’t have to dig for it, or climb towards it,
or run after it with a net. We can simply breathe.
We don’t have to hunt it down; it’s everywhere.
We don’t have to build or create it; it already is.
Right here. Right now. Like air. Like light.
It’s not something we have to earn, or win, or deserve.
It’s already ours, given to us as freely and naturally
as our lives are given, as much a part of us as the blood
that flows through our veins, the oxygen that courses
through our lungs, the spark and crackle of the joyous song
of movement continuously playing through muscle and nerve.
And all that blinds us to it is the make-believe of stories
we tell ourselves and our dream that things are otherwise.