Happiness is presence

It’s been so long since I wrote just for the sake of it.

For honoring the process, for the output, for the soft scratch of pen against paper and the anchoring tap of the keystroke.

It all happens here, at a small, foldable desk tucked into the corner of my kitchen. Me, hunched over a small notebook, thumb gripping the edge of the paper to keep it from slipping and turning on me.

Here is where those fleeting moments of presence find me detached, disconnected from a process that should find me eager to dive in and create.

This is the very nature of the creative beast — at times, beautifully immersed and inspired, others fully paralyzed and fearful of the page lines or canvas yet to be filled.

For many years, I’ve chased the former, hoping against all hope that I could somehow bottle inspiration and discover its secrets.

It is in this process of chasing, of searching, that I’ve found the fleeting light of happiness to be most out of reach.

Though we all know that happy is an entirely subjective emotion, we still strain and strive to understand its exact dimensions and makeup so that we can somehow manufacture for mass consumption.

Perhaps its the shadow of fear hugging our heels that drives this misdirection. Regardless, our insistence on chasing this ghost is only perpetuating our distance from the very thing we are chasing.

So I say this — being happy, finding happy, getting happy are nothing but useless distractions on a journey littered with them.

This doesn’t mean that change is unwanted, or that we shouldn’t hustle for the kind of work/life that fuels us with purpose and passion.

But hustle with an awareness about you, with an understanding that what you are hustling for is not a time machine that will allow you to relive the moments that comprise your journey.

Happiness simply is — a state of conscious presence that cannot be achieved or captured with enough money, enough time, or enough luck to push you passed that distant finish.

To be happy is to be.

At least, this is happiness for those of us fortunate to have the basic necessities in life, to have the love of good people, to have opportunity knocking at our door.

The rest is simply icing on that proverbial cake.