Like A time Capsule

Our showers are a little like a time capsule don’t you think?

                                I’ve talked about this a lot. It’s funny but when you think of it. Your shower is like a time capsule that can transport you back like magic to different times in life. If you’re not in a hurry, it can be a place where you sing or cry or pray or just think. I remember hating my hair and buying different shampoos and conditioners that gave me hope for shiny straight hair. And later, face washes and masks to get rid of acne or wrinkles depending on what decade we were in. So, in a weird way, it was a little like magic. It’s the one thing we’ve done for most of our lives.

 Around eight or nine or so, we started taking showers. A kind of coming of age thing. We didn’t need someone else to wash us. It was one of the first grownup things we began doing for ourselves, and so from that time on, we shampooed, rinsed and repeated. Over and over again, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year and decade after decade. We meet ourselves in that shower, wherever we are. We wash, shampoo, we sing, and we pray, and we cry, and we think. We close our eyes lean back and rinse the soap out of our hair. And over the years, we have made plans, cried where no one could hear, sang, whether or not someone could hear, had phantom conversations with ourselves, and dreamed dreams. Sometimes a scent can snap me back like a rubber band and depending on the age I can remember what dial soap smelled like, or herbal essence or lemon up! As I lean back I am that age again with my eyes closed rinsing my hair.

Happiness

Recently, I have gone on a hunt for the meaning of Happiness. I’ve already gotten some great material from my friends and loyal readers. First and foremost, I’ve discovered, it is the Heavenly peace that surpasses all understanding. The love that God wants for each one of us. I feel that His message is; that this is just a speck of our existence and that there is so much more. The world is like a classroom of lessons that we each get a chance to experience. And just being born is our God given opportunity to learn the lessons as we are given the freedom of choice and to choose our own paths. It is in that free choice that we find happiness and pain, joy and sorrow and the lessons He has for us.

I’ve written about this before… in another post………

That I picture God releasing our souls into the world with all the love and hope and joy for each one of us as we are born. And then we HIT the world! Crying and screaming as we enter, almost like inside a bubble piercing the atmosphere of “life” and all at once all of the lint and debris of the world stick to that bubble and we’ve landed in a place where we must navigate through all of the happiness and sorrow, the crisis and joy, the hate and the love that each one of our lives hold for us.

And though we may live an average of 80 or so + years, IT is just a speck in the way God measures things. And as we grow older we begin to realize how short life really is and that we just have a short time left to learn the lessons. So within my “Happiness Project” I want to share a few things that I’ve learned. Like I said, nothing is ever going to be better than God’s love. And that heavenly peace we will each know someday by following HIM. And I can’t find a better definition of Happiness. But because we can only anticipate that while we are in this life, I think I have realized some things relevant to just being happy here. And my best conclusion is just that! Being happy in the moment. Right now, this minute! Realizing how fleeting it is and how quickly it will pass!

When we are young, we can’t wait for the next thing. We are nine and want to be ten and then we want to be a teenager and then we want to drive and date and move out. And then all of a sudden we have bills and are paying rent and sometimes miss those days of having to only worry about our homework and passing a test and the weekend not coming soon enough and then we start to realize those weekends come and go a lot faster, the older we get. It’s Friday and all of a sudden it’s Monday and then it’s Friday… and so on! It all is a little like a flip book! We are always in a rush!

And THIS my friend is IT in a nutshell! Happiness is being in this moment right now, Winne The Pooh has a saying that is one of my favorites. He says;

“Even though honey is a very good thing. Sometimes… right before you eat the honey is almost as good as when you do!”

THAT has always resonated with me! Falling in love, Planning a wedding, looking forward to a vacation, dreaming about that dream house you someday plan to have, planning your family… just looking forward to life. But enjoying the process! Not rushing it.

Today, a lot of those things I looked forward to have happened. And I gotta say a lot of the in-between times were interrupted by life. But the thing about that, is I survived. And knowing that even the saddest times are survivable is kind of enough for now. And though there is no magic formula for Happiness that I can tell you, I do feel satisfied that I’ve landed on a small secret in my quest to find it. You just have to keep looking forward to what’s next. Because right before you eat the honey is sometimes almost as good as when you do!