Do you ever get slammed with a feeling of sudden elation? For instance, when you are taking out the trash, or walking home from the bus stop?
Everything comes together, the scent, the song (playing out loud or in your head) the view... and you are suddenly filled with so much gratitude that you want to fall to your knees?
We live in a hard world. The injustice is absurd, the corruption, the scandal, the rampant hatred and fear. So many lives and
livelihoods are ruled by war, abuse, inequity, hunger and fear. Amidst the horrible suffering, it seems almost selfish to relish in the moments we are relieved from it. But we must. For just as the height of our collective joy is limited by our individual pain, our collective suffering is eased by our individual grace. In other words, we owe it to each other to feel our happiness deep in our bones whenever we get the chance. We need to let it in like a sauna. We're obliged to let the joy sink into our marrows.
It happens a lot on the mountain, or when we're doing the things we love most. When I'm running on a mountain road and they just cut the hay and the sun is going down golden and an owl cruises alongside me for a hundred paces, it swoops in. And when there's enough snow to float and I'm skiing through the aspens with the cold in my nose and a blue sky ripping open, it explodes within me. It still comes easily on a bike, of course, pulsing up a hill or soaring down. The sound turns to color and the colors turn to music. Even swimming, a smoothness like molten pearls envelops me, and the effort disappears into the rhythm. Until I reach the edge of the lane or the trees, the bottom or top of the trail. And I snap back to reality, panting like a hyena with bongo drums in his chest.
But lately, this formidable serenity has hit me when I'm just hanging out. When Talon makes his little brothers laugh, when Cora smiles at her book. Riding on the Cruiser bike with the Dog trotting along. Even in the classroom, when I all the kids find focus or one finds understanding. It's like everything is trotting along normally, and time seems to slow way down. I feel like I'm inside a smile or a sunrise. Or a commercial. Then the colors fade back to normal and the sounds regain the familiar slight muffle, and it ends.
Like a clue in a scavenger hunt, one moment like this reminds us that we're on the Right Track. I used to be satisfied with a couple every year, or a month. But I think some people perceive life like this quite often, and that appeals to me. Amidst the darkness and eternal lonliness of our humanity, the pursuit of happiness (or it's pursuit of us) is.... compelling.
