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August 18, 2016

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You make your own happiness. That’s what everyone says, right? That it’s up to you to decide whether you’re going to be happy or unhappy? Personally, I didn’t know that for an embarrassingly long period of time. Then I saw some poster or meme or quote on someone’s tee-shirt that said it takes just as much effort to be happy as it does to be sad.

WHAT? I remember thinking to myself. It takes just as much effort to be happy as it does to be sad? No way.

I should tell you that at the time I happened to be deeply and profoundly sad. I was experiencing the kind of sorrow that makes you wonder if you’ll ever not be enveloped in it. You see, my father was dying and our family was plunged into caregiving and managing an illness that blindsided us — all while watching our once vibrant patriarch deteriorate swiftly in front of our eyes. When I saw those words about happy and sad and the energy it takes to be either of them, I was mired in grief and an overpowering sense that I was forgetting something critically important. I had no relief from that feeling of being behind some invisible 8-ball. My brain was constantly whirring. When one problem was tackled my brain clicked over to another like it was a plastic Viewmaster.

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take away his car keys

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ask the pharmacist in a whisper where to find adult diapers, go to aisle, come to the realization you are buying diapers for your father, sob in the feminine/baby care section

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pick up his prescriptions. wait, one is missing and two aren’t ready to be filled yet?!

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dial the number of the doctor to see about a stop-gap medication so his tremors won’t be so terrible while we wait until we can refill the prescription that’s only barely working anyway

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leave message for doctor, knowing it will be days before you’ll hear back

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make voice sound cheerful: call parents to make sure the suffering — biblical at this point — make sure it’s manageable today.

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come to the soul-crushing realization that, really, all you can do for him is help keep his suffering manageable.

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Sadness feels so heavy. So dense. So impossible to shed. Furthermore, what do we do if there’s nothing to be happy about? I can’t be truly happy while someone I love is in distress. Ah, but here’s the point.

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 My fingers tippity-tap these letter buttons, spelling all this out to you, from a sunny summer day in August. I feel a light breeze and move my glass of water to keep a pile of scraps of paper from taking flight and it occurs to me that this moment — this very moment — is a happy one. I look up from typing. I am outside writing in the shade of a Eucalyptus tree. A few feet away the hammock swings and I smile at the creaky sound it makes as it rocks back and forth on its ancient metal pole stand. I imagine it is the rope sighing. I sigh with it. Because it finally registered.

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Happiness is what’s found or made or recognized on a minute-to-minute basis. It’s always there for you, you just have to set the Viewmaster aside and fiddle with the lens in your mind so that it all comes into focus.

So, in a second, when I slide my finger on the square below these lettered buttons, guiding the blinking cursor to the word “publish,” these words strung together on a tranquil if fleeting August day, they will float out into the ether of the internet. These words will drift into space and across time and perhaps even land in front of another set of eyes like yours. And yes, they shall remind future me what it was like to be past me, wearing that heavy cloak of our family crisis every day, back nearly crumbling under the strain of unrelenting heartbreak. But I will also have a souvenir of this moment by the creaky hammock. The moment it occurred to me that yes, though sometimes it might not feel that way, happiness takes just as much energy as sadness. No more, no less.

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