I Choose to be Happy

        What is happiness to you? What does it mean to be happy? Is there a measurement for how you are doing in life? Is life like dieting? You make some good choices and some bad ones and hopefully happiness is ending the day with more good ones than bad? I wish I knew the answer to my questions. As for me, and hopefully my house, we are happy. I am happy. However, many simply are not. It's those people I wish I could give an answer to.

        Right now, I can only say:

1. Follow God. Even if He hasn't made Himself known to you in ages.
2. Marry the right person. He or she will save your life before their own. If you don't believe they were the right person, give them a chance to be.
3. Find a career you can tolerate. The saying that "If you love what you do, you never have to work a day in your life" is only for the rich. Real people hate going to work. Find something you don't hate completely.
4. Always have something to look forward to. You will save your family if you risk debt to go on a family vacation. Go and laugh and soak up every moment.
5. Stop wasting time on people that hurt you. Instead invest your time into the people that love you, even if they annoy you. They will be the last ones standing with you.
6. Try to be nice to everyone: even the people that frustrate you. It hurts both of you to be mean. It benefits both of you to be nice.
7. It's so cliche, but slow down and try to enjoy moments. Sitting and watching a television show with your loved ones may seem trivial, but life is short, and one day when you are gone...they will remember.
8. Give people a chance. I've learned the hard way that you should never judge anyone by first impressions. Wait it out. I think you will find some really great friends this way; even though most will probably confirm your initial reaction.
9. Don't be jealous of anyone. We are all messed up in one way or another. If someone seems to be perfect or have figured it out...know that it's fake. No one has it figured out. NO ONE!
10. Lastly, don't keep secrets. The horrible truth is far less damaging than the horrible lie. At least you can still be trusted and respected. Without trust and respect, you really aren't anything special at all.

        So there is my completely flawed and incomplete list of things I've learned about being happy. Life isn't just for you, it's for everyone else around you as well. We are all connected. Remember that you effect the people you see every day; even if you aren't happy where you are.





Sing.
Migrate.






Thanks for reading...Z

The Catch

        I dream about it a lot; my old life. At least the one I used to try and support my family with. It was my dream job that I never thought I wanted. At first, it wasn't a job at all. I did it because I loved it...I loved to help hurting kids. It became my livelihood and I still loved it. Until the end part. The end part is always the kicker. In movies, this part would be the catch. The part where it was always too good to be true and any hopes of perfection are lost. Everything becomes lost when you lose hope.

        The catch?

        I would love to blame it on others not caring about these kids. I would love to shift the blame to someone else. I try to do that a lot. The catch was that I couldn't do the job anymore, because I lost my heart for hurting people...because I was hurting. I had lost my faith in a God that wanted to heal. He could heal, but seemed to always choose not to.

He is God and He is good.

        But I stopped believing that He was a God that did miracles anymore. That's a rough place for me to be in. My own life has been a miracle. How does a person reconcile that? How do I see God lift my face out of the mud, even when I deserved to die, with the same eyes watching his brothers die miserably?

       So I left my perfect life and my dream job and became a nurse out of the desire to see people be cured with science instead. What I got was a lot more death. So much death that I had to find another nursing job with less death. What I learned is that people are going to die and no one is going to stop it. Some that I love died before they should have. That was always the catch.

        Everyone wants to be happy all of the time, and never feel the sorrow that makes happiness real. I was watching one of my favorite movies in bed the other day...a day that I chose to remain in bed half the day. Vanilla Sky came on, and the main theme was that happiness exists because of the bitter.

What a hard pill to swallow.

        So I am supposed to stomach the pain of losing so much to preserve this idea that this loss has created something pure and beautiful?

I look around. Here is my wife. Here are my children... happy and safe. Here are my friends... a list still growing. Here is my job...leading people to life and to death. Here am I... still breathing.


Still breathing.


        This journey has been anything but easy, and I'm guessing it was never supposed to be. But a thing that I've learned is that, it's equally as hard for the faithful as it is for the faithless. We all have to watch our friends and family die. We all have to feel powerless. We all have to weep and mourn and become something you never wanted to be.

None of us get out of this life unscathed.






Sing.
Migrate.




Thanks for reading...Z