So Much Happiness
It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
A wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
Something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
And disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
And now live over a quarry of noise and dust
Cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
It too could wake up filled with possibilities
Of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
And love even the floor which needs to be swept,
The soiled linens and scratched records….
Since there is no place large enough
To contain so much happiness,
You shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
Into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
For the moon, but continues to hold it, and to share it,
And in that way, be known.
By Naomi Shihab Nye
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You've just reminded me Alison – that there have been times in my life that I've been so happy, so satisfied with what life has given me, that I'm totally overwhelmed by it all. And Naomi (author above) is right – sometimes you're so happy, you just don't know what to do with it. I suppose it's because it's all around you, you can't bottle it, you can't photograph it ( of course you can photograph your results of feeling happy/content/satisfied, but not of the actual happiness). You can't touch it, or taste it or smell it. And still it's all around you. You can't escape it. I'd forgotten all about it.
You've just reminded me Alison – that there have been times in my life that I've been so happy, so satisfied with what life has given me, that I'm totally overwhelmed by it all. And Naomi (author above) is right – sometimes you're so happy, you just don't know what to do with it. I suppose it's because it's all around you, you can't bottle it, you can't photograph it ( of course you can photograph your results of feeling happy/content/satisfied, but not of the actual happiness). You can't touch it, or taste it or smell it. And still it's all around you. You can't escape it. I'd forgotten all about it.