Happy Ending vs. Happy Right Now

(Begin Threat Alert) Before I begin this piece, I need y’all to know that I am sitting on the floor of my Open House.  The house is empty and has no A/C.  It’s 93 degrees with 55% humidity so it feels like 104 degrees.  I have all the doors and windows open and I am in a pair of khakis and a white t-shirt.  There is already a sheen of sweat covering my entire body and in some places it’s moved past “sheen” to “rivulets”.  A drop of sweat just fell off the tip of a curl, I swear.   And it’s only 2:32 p.m.  I brought a cooler with me that has a 48 oz water bottle, a diet coke and a root beer.  The canned beverages make a lovely rolling device on my body as I try to cool down.  Can you say wet t-shirt contest....cuz it’s that bad.  I am hot all the time and it has nothing to do with my hormones, bitches!!  As someone who grew up in the DC area and spent my college years in and out of Houston, you would think I’d be used to this heat and humidity but 20 years in Southern California has pretty much ruined me for every other state.  So I write this in a NOT HAPPY mood.  Nope, I am pretty damn miserable.  However, I’ll do my best to create a virtual place of joy for us all....so you’d best keep reading! (End Threat Alert)

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I am a sucker for a happy ending.  Ask anyone who knows me (and this probably has something to do with my ridiculously unstable and crazy childhood. I won’t say dysfunctional because I hate that word and it’s so overdone that when people use it to describe their family, it really negates any true dysfunction.  Everyone’s like yeah yeah yeah, whatever.) Anyway, I love movies and books and fairy tales with their happy endings.  I especially love the fairy tales.  The princess always gets her man  - the handsome prince - and rides off happily ever after on the back of his trusty steed to his castle - where she will be waited on hand and foot, eat bonbons in bed, workout with her personal trainer everyday, never has dark roots and never chips a nail.  What is not to like about this?? There are many versions of this happy ending - just play Word Jumble and substitute your own adverbs and adjectives and you’ll get the picture.  Unfortunately, there are a few problems with this scenario. Well, no actually there is only one problem.

(OMG, side note:  I just got up from leaning against the wall, and I’ve left a sweat stain on the paint!  Holy shit.  That’s disgusting!)

OK, so back to the one problem.  That never happens.  And the real problem is not that it never happens but that we spend our time and energy trying to create that happy ending every day of our adult lives.  We all think that we need to have certain things and achieve specific goals to be happy.  We spend our entire life trying to keep up with the Joneses, waiting in line for the latest Apple device, resolving to lose that same 10 pounds we keep not losing, already figuring out what we are going to say to the person we’re talking to when they are done talking, and the never-ending planning what our lives should look like and guess what?  We are not in the moment - hell, we’re not even in the day!  We are so busy trying to create or recreate our lives that we miss out on right here and right now.  Right here, right now - a guy I know in AA says that in his pitch - and he’d hit the top of his head for emphasis.  (Stay) Right HERE (thunk), right NOW (thunk).  We need to stop making plans for the future and start living in this moment.  We need to be happy right now.  Exactly where we are right now is where we are supposed to be.

“Happy right now” means that even though I am aware of how incredibly physically uncomfortable I am, I am happy because 1.  I am writing and it’s totally quiet - no houseguest (whom I adore, Vanessa!) walking around, no dogs wanting to go out, no cute-but-annoying kitten climbing up my furniture with his sharp little claws. All I hear is the buzz of insects and the birds chirping outside.  2. I am also happy because I have an iced cold diet coke, iced cold root beer and an iced cold bottle of water to cool me down.  and finally, 3. I’m connected to myself when I stay in this moment.  And by being connected to myself, I am open to being connected to God.  Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is within.  I think that means that the spark of divinity that is in us is always available for us to connect to our God Consciousness, if we can focus on this very, small moment that we are in.  So, I stay still and try to quiet my mind and I hear the train whistle and the sound of it going by and it is soothing and magnificent, I never knew I would love the sound of a train rolling down the track until I moved to Nashville!  Being in the moment is a wakeful meditation and it allows us to delight in all the wondrous things happening around us - we see, hear, smell, taste and touch the moment.

Do I have plans for my future?  Of course, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t.  But while I have a big picture dream or idea, I focus on the small details of my life today and trust that it will unfold perfectly and that includes changes and adjustments to the big picture.  I know what I want, but I need to get out my own way.  This is hard for me - I am incredibly bossy and most of the time, I think I know better than everyone else and yes, even God sometimes.  Thankfully, a lot of *my* plans did not unfold the way I planned.  If they had I’d be fat, drunk, divorced with a passel of kids, living in a trailer in Texas somewhere - this I know is true because I actually got to see my *almost* future via some other woman who took my place.

But God had other plans for me.  I am supposed to live in today.  Enjoy what has been created. Breathe.  Look.  See.  When my beloved Charles was dying my world got very small and I lived in the moment but it was heavily countered by the fear of impending loss and death.  It was horrible.  It's very difficult to discuss your fears with the person who is actually dying.  I always thought the conversation would go something like this - Me:  Charles, I’m scared.  Charles:  Are you fucking kidding me??  I know in my heart that he would never have said that to me, but regardless, it felt selfish and self-centered to even say that to him and so I hid that fear buried it very deep inside me.  I put on such a tough exterior and I went to battle.  And I did not stay in the moment at all.  I stayed in the past much of the time and the rest of the time in the future.  My life was not unfolding the way I had planned.  I hated God for five years - the year and a half Charles was sick and the three and a half that followed his death.  My life was filled with would haves, should haves, could haves.  Then finally, I broke.  I gave in, gave up and surrendered.  And that is a whole other blogpost but the main point is that I slowly learned to live in the present moment again. I stopped working.  I stopped everything.  Then I started hiking.  And I started breathing. And exhaling.  I don't think I had taken a deep breath or fully exhaled during those five long years.  My life had been a series of short little breaths.  Just enough to get me through. At the top of Runyon Canyon on a clear day, you can see to the Pacific and past it to Catalina Island.  The coast was 15 miles away - Catalina much further.  I never knew until I reached the top if it would be clear or obscured by the marine layer.  Regardless, once on top, I would sit and just stare at the ocean or the mountains or downtown.  It didn't even matter, I just paused and contemplated what was in front of me.  I was totally in the moment and I slowly became present for my life again - I was back in today. It was as simple as that but it took me five years to figure it out and it was a painful process.  As a result,  I am happier and more at peace and more accepting of the unknowns in my life than I have ever been.


My life has taken some amazing twists and turns and I still don’t know where my path leads next.  I have an idea of where I’d like it to go and what I would like it to be.  By staying in right now, my hands are extended palm up - open, ready to receive - not tightly clenched, holding on to yesterday or trying to catch tomorrow.  That’s the secret then!  By being happy right now,  I am ensuring my happy ending.  All my todays are filled with blessings that I accept, appreciate and acknowledge and accordingly my yesterdays will carry the shading of today's joys and my tomorrows will unfold magnificently the way they should because I haven't projected my short-sighted will on them.

And lookee here - in the time it took me to write this, the two hours of my horribly hot Open House have passed and I have done something useful and created something to which I am committed and I get to share with you guys - that is beautiful to me.


Go and be happy “right now”.