It is easy to be happy when you are happy. It is natural to be happy when everything falls into place. It is less easy for you to be happy when you hit snags.

In theory, you understand that it is your place to have happiness regardless of circumstances. In practice, you may find your heart aches. You don't want heartache, and yet you have it. You're not quite adept at returning to a state of happiness or at least to a state that is not unhappy. You would like to be good at it. You are doing the best you can, only your best isn't what you wish it would be.

You haven't found the switch where you can turn happiness on and unhappiness off.

I know you ask yourself why unhappiness is as easy as falling off a log, why for one little adverse thing, your happiness is quickly ruined. In a thrice, your happiness gets cut in half, and yet ten positive things don't seem to turn happiness back on so easily. Why is this? To what have you given your strength? Can it be that a cross word cuts you in two and kind words cannot put you back together?

But you are not Humpty-Dumpty. You can be put back together.

One thing to do is to get your mind off the unhappy track it is on. It is obvious that you are to switch your attention. This is where having an occupation stands you in good stead. That you have to go to work gets you moving. You have to put your attention elsewhere. You have to get ready. You have to go there. And you have to occupy your mind with other matters while you are at work. Your mind cannot be on two things at once.

Dwell in My house, beloveds. Service to others is a key. It is a big key. Even reluctant service helps to get you out of where you may be stuck. You turn in grief for work. You may watch the clock, and yet, while you are watching the clock, such an ordinary event, you are not wreaking havoc with your heart.

Give yourself permission to be brief with grief. Consider suffering a thief. Unhappiness is not mandated. You don't have to keep it. It is not noble. It is not your friend.

I do not speak of pretense. There are corners of your mind where deep hurt will come up, yet you do not have to stay long on thoughts that make your heart hurt.

Yes, there is such a fine line between honoring grief and moving it to where it is quieted down. What if there were no cause for grief? What if there were not reasons given for it? What if there were no sense of loss? What if there was nothing to beset upon a sense of happiness, even middling happiness? What if you could let go of grief?

It is not that you put grief in a closet and lock the door and pretend it away. Yet, at the same time, you are a good sport, and you do not hang on to it. It is not that you repress. It is that you get on with life.

Perhaps you have come to know heartache too well. Possibly heartache has become a badge of honor, and you honor it over happiness. Perhaps you think heartache is honorable and unselfish and happiness less honorable and more selfish. It is the reverse. Happiness is more honorable than unhappiness. Both are real on Earth, and yet I ask you to hold happiness before you and so light up the world.

 

John