How Happiness Thinks

By Susan “Honey” Good

My brother is an art collector. When I was in my twenties he convinced me to start collecting art and suggested I buy a beautiful Frank Stella. I listened and my fabulous Frank Stella hangs over our bed in our California home. During this same time frame he gifted me with a poster that I have, to this day, hanging in the dressing area of my bath. Forty years later, I am still in love with both!

I want to share the poster’s words of wisdom because my message today is about living into your answer for 2016.

“Be patient with all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers that cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them and the point is to live everything. Live the questions now and one day you will live into your answer!”

Today is the third day of the New Year. It is the month to dream, to look forward to the year ahead, to ask yourself questions of the journey you want to travel the next 364 days of 2016. If someone were to have asked me, three weeks ago, to describe in one word how I want to feel in 2016 I would say, “Happy!”.

If that same person were to ask me to name one word I would like to remove from my lifestyle I would say, Stress! I am almost certain that many of you darlings feel as I do.

I referenced the poster in today’s blog because quite accidentally, I lived into my answer on how to be happy with stress because I signed up to take a six-week class taught by my Rabbi on “How Happiness Thinks.”

I learned that the word happy and stress go arm-in-arm. Happiness does not come anyone’s way without some stress. It is part of the equation of realizing true happiness.

If you want to solve a family situation or take on a new role of purposefulness in this passage of your life, come to terms that the stress you will undergo will create the happiness you are seeking. In other words darlings: No pain, no gain.

Whatever we want badly enough creates stress. We have to feel pressure, anxiety, difficulty, and hassle in order to feel happiness with the final accomplishment. You have no idea the ‘stress’ I went through to find the right words to make my point in this blog. But, it was worth it because I am ‘happy’ with my message.

Life is not a dress rehearsal, darlings! So, let’s all perform! Let’s be able to walk by a mirror, see our image and smile. Make your difficult resolution one you have been afraid to tackle by loving the question (stress) and living into your answer (happiness). That is your real inner power, darlings!

I want to wish you and yours a wonderful year ahead, filled with good health, ‘happiness’, and love.

Do something GOOD today: Let your ‘Grands’ know that life without questioning will never bring happiness.

Photography by Hallie Duesenberg