Happy is not being unhappy

Who promised that you would be happy.  How many times have you heard, don’t look so unhappy as if it were a benchmark goal!   

I listened to a tape last night from a Buddhist on Addition.  I was a food addict.  Food meant companionship, conversation, community.  You have a better chance getting someone to spend time with you if you suggest a meal.   If you just say, let’s spend time talking, take away and talk, you are less likely to get a positive response.   However, if you said, “I know an excellent restaurant… and it is my treat… “ good chance you have a taker. For me, the restaurant usually did not provide the food I needed so I ate the wrong things or over ate.  If I added a few glasses of wine, I was happy, we had a great time, but then trying to put together why, I could not get a handle on what made me happy about the occurrence and often was numb with food or alcohol.

I am in Thailand now, and it is hard for me not to remember the first trip and the hours of laughter that I experienced with the four people in the cabins near mine.  Every night we got together and shared a few beers, swiped stores, and laughed at everything.  “we thought those days would never end”.  Well, they did and the void was very hard to accept or believe.

I am very lucky to enjoy my own company and I can honestly say that 90% of the time I am not unhappy. 

So, I have put together a few thoughts to keep me in that state and if lucky, once in awhile find some happiness.

Many of the Bonny rules of the road have a foot in 12 step or Buddhist principles.

1.            1.Put aside things I have no ability to impact. -  while this is not easy, and Lord               knows I have tried to push many a rock up a hill, I am getting better at knowing what my                   stuff is and what I have just to accept as the way it is at this time.

          2.  See the past as valuable training and nothing more. – It is very easy to fall into the rabbit hole of blaming those that raised me, my genes, or my mistakes.  There is Karma but not necessarily manifest in this lifetime.   Even if I did a great stupid thing and pissed off half the world, - I can’t take it back but only learn the lesson presented and move on.  I have come to be grateful for my mistakes for they have created the greatest learning opportunities.

    3. Never allow yourself to whine. (Or complain. Or criticize.) – This is a hard one, but they all are.  I am particularly good at the poor me whine. I don’t appreciate others who whine and it definitely is a sign of immobility.

So for today, I happy that I am not a stuck whining person who is unhappy.   My motto uses to be “it is all good”… now maybe it is “get over it and get on with life”…. You are “happy.”