Are You Happy?

"Are you happy?" was the catch title on the magazine.  I didn't pick it up but the question lingered.

I thought it an odd question, one which theoretically requires only a "Yes." or a "No." and yet it begs with either answer, "Why?" 

At two in the morning, the answer woke me up from sleep and came spinning out of my brain.   Was I happy?  Yes. 

Why?

It wasn't because my life was easy.  That week we'd dealt with a broken dryer, throw up from two children, one really awful grade, the bills, collecting of paperwork for taxes and an unwanted three extra pounds.  Top that with college looming for the oldest, the youngest being only two months old and a three year old that kept having set backs on pottying and certainly by the world's standards, I should be miserable if not insane to boot.  

Yes I should be prematurely gray and worn thin. Ten children lead to exponential messes if even half drop their shoes, coats and backpacks at the door when they explode out of the car.  Ten beds to make or at least check, thirty three meals in a day and sixty-five items of clothing plus possible sheets and towels loom every evening by the washing machine.  There is always a list.  This week two need hair cuts, we need to get an oil change, three dressers should be threaded for clothes out of season or that don't fit and I have to schedule four dental appointments, order a birthday present, get track shoes and we have music lessons on Tuesday.

With pasta, hot dogs and waffles as regulars on the weekly menu, vacations that are mostly camping or to see family and a 12 passenger van that often is filled with stuffed animals, stickers and coats that have been orphaned, it seems I should at the very least feel discontent and dissatisfied. Like a modern day Rapunzel trapped in a tower of old french fries, diapers and broken crayons, (all of my own making), waiting to make a mark on the world in some way other than mothering, I should be screaming "Calgon Take me away." But the inescapable fact of the stillness of 2:32 a.m. as I listened to the faint sound of my son's radio, my two year old singing in his sleep and the gentle sigh of milky contentment from the baby, was.... I am happy.

Even with three year old sneakers and maternity jeans because the others don't fit quite yet, it didn't matter and I couldn't stop the happiness.   It was pouring out like an endless bubbling fountain and yet I felt full; the fullness of my happiness echoed my youngest daughter's happiness at being full. 

Back to the question. Why?

Because the world does not quite get happiness. 

It can't because happiness is not of this world.  Happiness is not the absence of work or total ease of life.  (Celebrities would be example 1 of how having all your appetites sated and all your worldly needs addressed in abundance and being even surrounded by success and beauty have nothing to do with actual happiness). Happiness is and was and will always be a state of grace, brought on by having meaningful things to do, people to love and a relationship with the Divine that acknolwedges that all of this, good, bad, messy and ugly, difficult and seemingly impossible is practice.  We are testing how much we will love in this life; how close we dare skate to God in our fallen state.

With a beloved husband and ten alarmingly interesting people to serve and nurture thorugh this life, my life could only be understood as lavishily happy, shamelessly joyful, luxiouriously luminously laborious but peaceful.   Was I happy?  Yes. Yes.  A thousand times yes times a thousand more yes.

3:07 a.m.   Now.  If the question had been, "Are you rested?"  Different story.

Sunday Imponderables

1) Does anyone else go fishing for toys atop their crown molding? I would like to know.

2) Why are there two paper cups duck taped to a paper towel tube in the bathroom?

3) Can anyone explain the presence of a half gallon jug of water in the middle of my son's bedroom?

4) Why does the most organized child with the neatest hand writing have the worst spelling and messiest room?

5) How come it takes me two minutes to dress myself and even if I lay out their clothes, it takes me an hour to get all the littles dressed? 

6) Why can't I lose weight at the same accidentally startling speed that I can gain it?

7) When in my life will I ever be early for an appointment?

8)  How can a child lose one shoe one week after we bought new ones so completely and yet I know it is in the house somewhere, such that my resistance is weakening and I'm considering buying replacements as we trudge through week three of creative footware? Answer: I don't know but think it has something to do with the same reason I keep skinny jeans. 

9) Why hasn't some entrepeneur made clothes to sell for Barbies that actually fit and don't make the doll look like she should be walking the street? 

10) When will scientists come up with a break thru study that advocates one of the habits I already have?

Swimming in Unfamiliar Waters

The danger of the internet and blogs and favorites is that you only circulate in the forums where you are comfortable and familiar.  It is this tendency, to follow the well worn paths, to chose to find places where what you think or feel is validated, that make the internet both exciting and a desperately lonely place.  Because community is dependent upon shared values and those values are only articulated through words, not faces or kind acts or meals or visits or even conversations, the communities often fall away when dissent is openly presented.  Those who agree are the polite and acceptable people in the society.  Those who fight or disagree openly are often considered trolls.  It doesn't help that the only means of communication is words and at times all of our words are not always written or read with a charitable sprit.
 
How do we know we're not allowing ourselves to only swallow what we want to hear? 

By reading in places that are not our home. 

The first thing I learned in venturing into the realm of Salon, Slate, Huffington Post and Das Kos is they really do think Republicans are stupid.  Some of the examples they give validate this opinion and the red meat is devoured just as surely as it is on Conservative sites when Democrats are bashed.   So we are not so different in that, both sides reflexively sustain and take pleasure in having validation of their preconceived notions of what the opposition is like.  Yet in the actual world, we have friends of every political possible stripe and I've never considered them trolls and I presume they don't think I'm an idiot.  I've never felt treated as if I were.   We forget this when we emerse ourselves in the strictly political world; that R and D are not like the mason dixon line during the civil war.

Secondly, like conservative and politically right leaning websites, left leaning places presumed the audience would be in agreement regardless of the situation.  There was little serious consideration given to the political, moral, ethical, or rational reasons why anyone might oppose anything the site itself deemed true and correct.
There was little indication of any belief that the moral, ethical or rational reasons for opposing something, anything one's own political prism deemed correct, might be genuine or legitimate.   The deficit of trust based on political ideology logjammed any genuine examination of an issue as more than a right or wrong, up or down, sort of thing.  Republicans were only obstructionists and those who came to the site or article to protest, ignorant Fox News watching masses brainwashed by Glen Beck, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh or their religion.  

But I couldn't shake the idea that if we are ever going to get past the bitter divide that threatens to balkanize not only our political structures but our very nation, we're going to have to begin swimming in unfamiliar waters and be willing to allow others to play in our backyard on more than the rare occasion.  The result of this type of virtual browsing for cliques into which we fit can leave one with the profound sense of isolation akin to high school. Walking the hallways, there is the cool politicos over here and the moms with many over there and the Catholic blogs and the Republican blogs and the news blogs and the prolife blogs and the humor blogs and all of them seem to have a focus. But the browser must fit the focus to fit in.

After reading a few pieces on Das Kos I also began to wonder, how will we ever get beyond anything if everything is spin regardless of party.  How will we address the serious issues of healthcare if any criticism is immediately deemed only a political ploy?  How will we address the serious issue of the deficit if all spending is justified because others spent first or more?   How can we be a representative republic if our watchdogs no longer check and verify everything and love truth more than even a story they prefer?  How do we break through the noise if all we want to hear is our own voice? How will we be anything but a tower of bable full of sound and fury signifying nothing if the only thing we will ever accept on any side of the political aisle, is absolute agreement with our own preconceived or preformed notions?  Rush: I'm always right, Don't Doubt me and Olberman: All Republicans are idiots and Tea Partiers too and they're the worst people in the whole world both reflect the internet agree or go away type thinking that permeates the internet. 

I don't have an answer and I'm not trying to sound superior.  I'm asking how in a culture that supposedly values multiple perspectives, we've instead become a world wide web of sharp edges ready to shred anyone who gets too close.