When
it feels like Cheerfulness is not an option,
What then?
My Motto is
“Life is a Choice, Choose
Cheerful, Live Happy”
But what about those days when it feels like
cheerfulness is too far away to be a choice?
What about those days when the sadness just coats your soul like heavy
cream on a wooden spoon? Those days
when all the sad things of your life rise to the top of your memory and just
float there, refusing to be reincorporated back into their spots of long
ago. I recently had a couple of those
days. Too many things aligned and like
the ancient monsters of Greek lore, escaped their prison and surfaced to show
their faces. It was a flood of sad days
and sad things that had happened. Sad
Goodbyes, Sad faces, Sad greetings, Even Sad food. What
about THOSE Days?
Even
Those days, Especially Those days, you
have to get up and get out of bed and shower and get dressed, and show up to
your life, Even if you think there will
be nothing worth smiling about, Those
days matter most.
When building a godlike countenance, some things are easy. Being nice to nice people, being happy during a happy time, living by the rules when the rules make sense
and you see happiness because of righteousness, are all things most of us can
do with a fairly small amount of effort.
But we are not asked to do the easy,
we are asked to do the Godlike.
Be nice to people who are rude and thoughtless or worse mean and hateful
and unkind. We are asked to see the joy
in all things, the sunshine and the storm, the sweet and the sour, the joyful and the
sorrowful. We are required to live all
God’s commandments, the Thou shalt not
and the Thou Shalt. Don’t kill people,
but also love people who are rude to you in the shopping line. Smile at that small child and that big guy
who just cut you off in traffic. Pray
for that worker who didn’t care to do his job, thereby making your life more
complicated. All those things that make
you want to scream. THOSE DAYS !
Those are the days, when it is the hardest that we
must not give up. Those are the days
when we are closer to our goal then we realize.
I watched a little person many years ago try to
learn a new skill. One that I will admit
is hard for most people to learn. His
little fingers did not want to work the way he wanted them to. He tried and tried to get them to work
together to make the music he could hear in his head. But time after time a finger would betray him
and the sound would fail. Finally, sad and discouraged he said he just couldn’t
do it and would have to give up. What he
didn’t know what that I could see that he was almost there just a few more tries and he would have
it. He wasn’t as far away as he
thought. And so I encouraged him to try one last time. HOORAY
Success. His smile could have
lit the entire coastline. He was so
proud of himself and then he said something I have never forgotten.
Well, he said,
I guess I was just one try off.
We are all just one try off. We are all just around the corner from our
destination. Does that make that last
try an easier? NO. But it does make it worth trying. And if you are two more tries or three or
more, Keep trying. On those days when I just want to go back to
bed and hide, I remind myself that
perhaps today is the day I will be able to keep my tongue in check and not
offend, Perhaps today is the day I will
have patience all day, or find joy in that stranger who is also having
a day like mine and thinks I should pay for his day. Perhaps today will be the day when Joy finds
me and lifts me up to a more cheerful state of being. Perhaps today Someone else will help me find Joy in the
Journey.
So on those days, phone a friend. Grab a lifeline and
hang on until help comes. Because,
really, that is why we all keep trying,
because today, just maybe, you will be
the joy in someone’s day that keeps them going.
Today, when you feel like you
just can’t, Be the answer to someone’s prayer for just a bit
of joy.
