Apricot Billows: Colorful Tidings of Happiness
“For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.” - Henri Cartier-Bresson
Sure hope the new year is starting out well for you! I thought I'd offer you a hope I have for you and a small bit of wisdom for the ages in this first post of 2022.
I want you to be happy. More specifically, I want you to choose to be happy, regardless of your circumstances.
That's a daring thing to hope for in the modern age, what with everyone's feelings controlling so much of what they are. But your feelings, if not managed properly, can really keep you from being happy.
Let me tell you a quick story... When the town I live in didn't pickup the leaves from the curb in our neighborhood like they announced they would, I was concerned about the possibility of leaves clogging our storm drains and about how the leaves were simply blowing back into our yards after many of us had spent much energy and money on getting them to the curb in the first place. After waiting a couple weeks, and watching with mounting frustration as leaf piles were driven over, blown about, and washed to the drains in heavy rain, I placed two calls to the town asking about when the town was planning to do what they said they would. I knew the second call was unnecessary and wouldn't help make the leaves get picked up any faster but I couldn't help myself. I felt like my neighbors and I had done the right thing so the town should too. I foolishly tried to exert control over something I had absolutely zero influence on.
Much of our anxiety, the opposite of happiness in my book, is caused by spending too much mental energy on things we don't control or even have influence over. By focusing too much on things outside our influence, like who won an election or why the leaves aren't picked up yet or when will the Amazon package finally be delivered, we succumb to anxiety. We feel like we don't have control and thus we cannot be content, let alone happy.
But if we think about it for a bit, we'll realize that the only things we truly control are what we think, say, and do. Our thoughts, our words, and our actions. That's it.
Of course, we also have some influence over those in our sphere with whom we've built a relationship of trust, but still no control. We can't know for certain what someone else will do. We can only know what we will do. And that's important.
For if we surrender to the reality that most things, in fact almost all things, are way outside our ability to control or even influence, we can stop worrying about them. We can work hard, confident in the knowledge that we've done our best but solaced that if things don't work out, it wasn't something we had direct control over anyway. And any feelings of disappointment or frustration we naturally have can be dealt with maturely and in a way that doesn't sacrifice our basic happiness.
Accepting this reality allows us to live freely with a happy attitude. We should labor most on ourselves: what we think about, what we say, and how we act. Gaining mastery of self helps with our ability to have influence because we'll have the confidence that we've effectively led ourselves first, before trying to do so with others. And we should avoid spending much time at all on things we can't control. That way madness lies, as William Shakespeare's King Lear well understood.
So still the leaves sit at the curb. I can't control when the town will get them but I can control how I rake them back from the storm drains and how I rake them back out of my yard to the curb after a windy day. The leaves still sit at the curb but I get some exercise in the fresh air. I chose a better response than frustration. A shift in perception, how we look at a situation, can be a wonderful thing.
Choose to be happy! You can make that choice because that's something you alone control.
Enjoy my post from January 1, 2022...
Orange you glad I shared this photograph? Did you know this passionate hue is associated with joy and enthusiasm, creativity and success, encouragement and change, and happiness and balance? Happy New Year, my friends! I really hope 2022 has orange things in store for all of us.
Clicking on the image will open it in full screen
‘Apricot Billows,’ a deciduous diva in the chilly embrace of an unusually cold late afternoon during fall in Deep Gap, North Carolina, in Watauga County.
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