Honey Help YourSelf

Last week I included a video of a local artist's work in the It Might Not Work post. His name is Michael Grab—seriously, it is—and he's a self-described balance artist. I was fascinated not only by this man's hands, but by his celebration of impermanence and beauty in the moment. I got in touch and asked him if he wouldn't mind talking with me about his art and approach to life, which are one and the same. As you might imagine, Mr. Grab's got ahold of something big. What a treat to talk with him about it. ∞   ∞   ∞ I guess we both kind of found each other—the art and I. I've been doing it obsessively since the summer of 2008. I study a lot of spirituality, and I've always had an interest in the mystical side of experience. There's something about balancing rocks that has this enchanted feeling about it. I usually look around for some kind of rock that tells me if it wants to be on top or whatever. I just start going through them and certain ones jump out at me. Others, I put back. So I guess it's a dialogue between me and the rock. Knowing that it's impermanent, I kind of like that. When I first started doing balance art, I was always a little bummed when they fell over, but through thousands and thousands of times, I actually prefer them to fall because it closes the book, I suppose. In no way do I ever feel like I've wasted my time. It can take up to forty minutes to build a piece and less than a second to fall over. And it just doesn't matter anymore. The most valuable thing I think I've gotten from this is learning to live in the moment and not worry so much about where money's going to come from or about something in the past and how I behaved or something. I mean, as long as you really stay present and in that moment—which is really the only time there is—everything kind of works out. It's an endless sequence of moments. I like performing these pieces too, doing them live in front of people. It's one thing to see the picture, it's a different thing to see it in three dimensions, but it's another step up to experience the building process of it. A lot of people watching won't see all of the really tiny adjustments I'm making; they'll think I was just standing there completely still for half an hour straight and it looks totally crazy until I let go. It looks crazy then, too, but it's a completely different thing. It's an exchange of energy between me and the people. People always comment about how it calms them down to watch me do this work. That's a cool part of it because I can almost feel everyone in a relaxed state of mind. I don't how that happens, but I can feel it. For people who tell me they view my work as erotic, I'd say they're definitely picking up on something that most people don't bother to talk about, but yeah, it's a really sensual experience. It's one of the aspects about it I enjoy the most. The way my fingers are vibrating against the rocks, the way you have to pay such close attention to the tiniest vibrations in the stones. That's the most satisfying part of it—the sensual, erotic aspect. I think with all of my art, I have a really romantic approach. It's hard to articulate. I think that going deep into this work must release the same hormones as making love. I can't pinpoint any specific thing, but I would say the whole practice of balancing over the last five years reaches over all aspects of my life. Just the meditative nature of it is so applicable for every other area. It's always a learning process: learning about myself, learning about how the rocks work, learning how to not lose a finger. You have to learn how to make mistakes better and how to consider all factors of an equation. I feel like my overall happiness has increased. I guess the biggest lesson that I'm learning about myself is that my reality depends on me and not anybody else, which, I think is the way a lot of people feel—like their reality is dictated by everybody else.

Mr. Rogers was probably the first adult who put words to the magical inner life I lived as a kid. I loved the fact that he thought every body and every person was special no matter where they came from and that the extraordinary was as real as we believed. Earlier this week a friend passed this video on to me. PBS did some amazing remixes from early children's shows, and I recommend them all. (Reading Rainbow is also a must-see.) As of this post I've watched it enough to burn the music into my brain and bop uncontrollably along with the music. This is a good thing. In my last post I talked about the impermanence of life and the importance of stepping into the river of risk to do what's in us to do. Fred Rogers knew all about this; he made his mark in the time he had and I will be forever grateful. I found these words of his wisdom and wanted to share them with the helpers in all of us. ♦ “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." To this day, especially in times of "disaster," I remember my mother's words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.” ♦ “The greatest gift you can ever give is your honest self.” ♦ “Confronting our feelings and giving them appropriate expression always takes strength, not weakness. It takes strength to acknowledge our anger, and sometimes more strength yet to curb the aggressive urges anger may bring and to channel them into nonviolent outlets. It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and our anger flow in tears when they need to. It takes strength to talk about our feelings and to reach out for help and comfort when we need it.” - - - - - - - You might also like: It Might Not Work Barefoot into Joy Hammer Time  

We talk a whole lot about passion—how to find it, do it, why we need it, and so on—and I'm all for it, mainly because I'm almost all passion. When I feel something deeply, I latch on so tight to it, you'd have better luck pulling a guard dog off the mailman. It's that first flash of adventure and foray into the unknown that draws me in. My question, now that we've passed through the holidays, the end of the world, and into the sobering rest of the year is, What do we do next? In previous New Year posts I talked big talk about the importance of dreaming dreams and realizing them. I also urged you—and me, too—to never ever, ever give up. I still believe this is true; we have to stay with the things we want and keep ourselves at least pointed in the direction of our goals. This year's no different, however. This year, I owe it to you to tell this much: it might not work. If you know nothing else about me, you know I'm a flat-out, wall-to-wall optimist. I can see the silver lining, sunshiny rainbows and candy-bearing faeries in most anything. Through lots of trial, error and trying again, the truth is happy visions of leprechauns and good intentions aren't what get the work done. The only thing that's going to get us to our dreams is showing up and staying in the seat, trusting yourself lay down another brick in your building. Period. Even with that said, there's still no guarantee that we'll get to our goal. Simply because everything could fall apart. In fact, I think you should expect it to. I love to go hiking by the creek. There's a trail alongside it that winds up into the mountains and down through town, and if you stay with it long enough, you get to see sides of the city that all too often go unnoticed. Among those gems along the creek trail are the painstakingly manmade cairns. In the late spring and throughout the summer, you can often spot people standing knee-deep in the creek stacking river stones atop each other in a delicate balance of big and small, jagged, smooth, and slippery slick. They do this for hours, choosing which rocks to stack where. They're amazing to watch. It's a meditation in itself, seeing them so connected to the creations they're shaping. For that moment, we as onlookers get to see what it looks like to become the thing that's being creating. Watch the video; it's a wordless testament to the impermanence and infinite space we occupy whenever we dare to create. It's oneness at its best. The creek will reclaim toppling the cairns in its flow just as Life will reclaim us all one day. The artists know this long before they enter the water. Whether it's within minutes, hours or weeks, they expect a certain kind of failure. And here's the lesson in everything we do: Life flows better when I/we can acknowledge, going in, that our art might not work out, that maybe nobody will see it, that we might not get loved like we wanted—you name it. Everything we do, no matter its scope, is temporary. Simply because we are temporary here and that's the only guarantee we get. When I first willed myself into the metaphorical waters to openly create and do my thing, I spent lots of time questioning the point of it all and whether people would get what I was trying to do. What if they don't? I asked. Then so be it, came the delayed response. The same holds true for those who do get it: they just do. Whenever I venture into new zones of discomfort and creativity, the more comfortable I get with failure and the chance things might fall apart at any minute. That's the risk we  take. It's never about saving face or playing safe and it's not something I can explain so easily if this post finds you idling on the sidelines right now. To feel the truth of what I mean, you have to venture into the water on your own. Test your mettle there, get a real feel for your work and how it rests in your hands. Connect with your art, whatever it may be, and be willing to let those stones fall where they may.

Thank you each and every body for making 2012 truly remarkable! I started this post by gathering up some classic holiday poems to share with you, but I'm delivering this recording instead. It's my wish for you — in a ho-ho-holistic celebration of body, mind, and spirit this season! With that, I'm off to celebrate the day. I hope you enjoy this recording, from my heart to yours. Happy Everything, Honey. Kriste - – - – - – - You might also like: Small Talk New Year Revolutions P.S. I Love You  

There's never a right response to tragedy. For me, it's always been disbelief followed by my need to help and be useful. In natural disasters like wildfire, Katrina, and Sandy, it's easy enough to donate clothes and blood, but what do we do when there's been a massacre? I've lived relatively close to the World Trade towers when they were bombed and, years later, the Aurora killings when they happened. If you've ever lived in the vicinity of tragedy like that, or on the fringe of any kind of violence, then you know how it tears at your sense of security and the idea that horrors on such a scale could ever happen in your back yard, so very close to home. I went numb when I first heard about Connecticut. Here in Colorado we'd only just emerged from the Aurora shootings, the grisly murder of a woman in Broomfield, and the savage rape, abduction and killing of a little girl in Westminster. Not all of those tragedies made national news, but the toll was heavy here at home, in Newtown and beyond, and the sum of it was just too much. As the stories unfolded and the death toll rose, it exposed the broken parts I think we've been sweeping aside for too long. We are all in some degree of pain, no matter what we've been telling ourselves. After days of increasingly bad news nothing seemed to matter. Not the work I did, not the dreams I had, not the love I wanted to give and get—nothing. Beyond my disbelief, anger and frustration in the past few weeks I landed in a kind of void that surprisingly seems to be helping me get my bearings again. Slowly. For addicts, it's akin to hitting bottom, and—to the extent I'd been operating within a false sense of security in the life I'd created for myself—I'd say I was an addict too, hooked on an illusion of how things should be in the world. So, like anybody dependent on ideas that are supposed to define a life, coming out of my self-imposed daze is taking lots of effort, relapsing, and conscious recommitment to showing up differently each day. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was a psychiatrist famous for her work of breaking down the grieving process into five stages. There's denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and, finally, acceptance. But she didn't live to see the Aurora movie theater, the Oregon mall, the Connecticut school, or the likes of Trayvon Martin and more—all still very much present in our consciousness, and each a cause for tremendous grief. I wonder what she would have said about killings closer to home—my home—within the last six months: the little girl abducted and brutalized by a wayward teenage boy; the innocent woman gunned down at the auto shop by an enraged ex; the crazed man fresh from jail who murdered his girlfriend, her sister and brother-in-law before turning the gun on himself in what would be his final, lingering act of violence. I would have liked to ask that expert: If we're in this together, then how do we find our way out of fear and anger enough to move toward a sense of safety again? How do we grieve for those we don't know and for the truth of what we do know—that something's going seriously wrong in the world? And what of vengeful men with guns? The way these murders are mounting, there's no time for denial. Yet, based on how I'm feeling now, arriving at an acceptance of killing sprees as commonplace is simply not going to happen. I went to a holiday service a few days ago at a local church. They were honoring traditions from around the world and across many faiths. It was my second time visiting, and they welcomed me like family. Two women manned the door of the sanctuary and threw their arms open as I approached. They beamed at me and said, I thank God you're here. They'd said as much to the people in front and behind me in line. I warmed in their embrace, thankful that although they'd heard the same devastating news, they were holding fast to something much greater. They ushered me into that spirit and it was beyond good.

It all started when we lost Erin's car. On the drive over, we'd been so immersed in catching up on the great and small details of our private lives that neither of us noticed we'd paid too little attention to where we'd parked—badly at that. The only t...

  It’s hard to create when my house is a mess. I’ve begun to think this applies to my larger metaphorical house, too. Look around: the government’s broke, the deficit’s crazy, the youth are belligerent while the boomers are brooding, the politicians...

A man walks into a psychic fair and asks the reader, Am I gonna meet a woman? She replies, Yeah. You just did. Now what? I love telling that story not just because it's tacky, but because it happened to me last month. It was a big weekend conference in Denver — another sprawling metaphysical affair — and I was presenting an hour-long talk on the importance of letting go of the past. Whoever said that we teach what we need to learn was on to something because in the past few weeks, months, years and more, I've been constantly reminded of how very important and easily overlooked this principle is. For privacy's sake, we'll call this man Don. Don  was a good-looking gentleman — tall and robust with a thick head of silvery hair that men half his age would envy. I asked him what he was doing to meet women and explained that despite what anyone else told him that weekend, it was up to him to take charge of his dating life. Don told me about the time he met a lovely woman at a recent political fundraiser and how they'd ventured into a lighthearted banter that lasted all the way through chicken and speeches, right up to dessert. That's when he learned that she’d once been a teacher. Don’s face tightened: I hate teachers— Wait, I said. Are you telling me this, or is this what you said to her, Don? Don confirmed what I’d hoped he wouldn’t, that he had indeed expressed his displeasure to the woman as forcefully as he had with me. He said he walked away from that table without so much as a second thought, a spoonful of dessert, or explanation. When he was fourteen Don was accosted on his on his way to class by a male teacher who came from out of nowhere, he said, grabbed the young boy by his collar, and flung him against a locker. Donnie, I don’t like the look of you, and I never have, the teacher said. Boy, you won't ever amount to anything. Why would a teacher do that? Don asked, leaning toward me. Then he lowered his voice and fussed with a speck on the table. I wasn’t doing anything and here was this teacher who did this to me when – I was a kid – I wasn’t bothering anybody. I was minding my own business. His face relaxed, revealing traces of the defenseless boy I imagined him being more than fifty years ago. No one came to help me, he said. Not a one of them. He and I stared at each other in silence for a few seconds. So, you hate all teachers, Don? He nodded. They are the scum of the earth. Even that woman at the fundraiser? All of them. Every teacher? Everywhere. Look, he said, my daughter's husband is thinking about becoming a teacher. I told him, 'You know I'm never going to speak to you again if you do this, right?'  When I shared Don's story during my talk that afternoon, I used his example as a reminder of what it looks like when we get stuck the past, reviving old wounds whenever life invites us to live in the moment. I asked him to consider whether he might be closing himself off from potentially great relationships – including the one with his son-in-law – because of his choice to make an entire group responsible for one person's bad behavior decades ago. I can't be sure how willing Don was to listen to me, but at least he gets credit for keeping quiet when it was my turn to speak. He also taught me a lot in the process, whether or not he intended to. Speaking of teachers, hows about we use Don's example and look at the ways we might be shutting down new opportunities in our own lives by nursing grudges, playing dumb, going numb, or refusing to make new choices on account of being so invested in the past? In what ways might you you unwilling to live in the moment? Take your time with this one, mull it over, and reflect as often as you need to; there will be a test. - - - - - - - You might also like: Hold That Door Signs P.S. I Love You

THE MENTERVIEWS: #6 of 6  Kam is a soon-to-be police commander living a happily married life in Maryland with his college sweetheart and wife of twenty-one years. They’ve got two teenage sons, and even though he’s seen the absolute worst in human relationships during his long career, Kam is careful about policing the lines between expectations, compromise, and commitment in his own relationship. ♥ The average individual gets his ideas about relationships from his parents, but I would have to say that probably one third of my ideas about relationships came from watching my mother interact with my stepfather. My biological parents were separated when I was about five, so it was a long time — probably until I was eleven or twelve — before I saw her interact with another man. My stepfather, he was there, but I don’t recall seeing them interact all that much. My mother worked a lot during the day and my stepfather worked nights, so I didn’t see them much together until I was older. I don’t know that they interacted like typical couples in love would interact. Although, I’m certain that my stepfather really loved my mother and vice versa; they just didn’t have a real huggy kind of relationship. It was more pedestrian — getting things done, making sure we had what we needed, doing what needed doing around the house and that type of thing. It wasn’t what you’d call a great model for seeing how people should treat each other in a relationship. It wasn’t until I started watching television that I began to understand how things should go. Believe it or not, lots of my ideas came from modern day TV. Shows such as Happy Days – I’m almost embarrassed to say it – but, you know, I was watching couples interacting. Then I’m watching the Cosby show, seeing how the Huxtables interacted and how they went through life. From my perspective, only fifty percent of what I saw on TV was even possible in a real relationship. Let me explain this: it showed how a husband should treat a wife, how parents should treat their kids, like that, but when you watch those shows, you never really see the background of how daily life gets done. The cooking, cleaning, planning and problem solving, you never really see how that works out. Come to think about it, I never really saw that with my parents either. So when I got married, none of it was what I expected. Some things seemed to be missing when we got together. There were these gaps between my expectations and the reality, you know, and I’m still trying to fill them in in some instances. In others, I guess they’ll never be filled in. It’s a constant work in progress — trying to interact with my kids, trying to interact with my wife, talking things through, and figuring it out. Because of our misconceptions about relationships and how they should be carried out, I’m constantly trying to work through and find a resolve, but ultimately, some of those things will never be resolved. I’ll give you an example: when I first married my wife, it was a long time in coming for me to figure out the ways in which she was so different from me. I realized it was because of how we were raised. Despite our having spent so much time together before getting married, it wasn’t until we got into the house with each other that I saw the difference, which was this: my mother worked Monday through Thursday from 6:30 in the evening to 3:30 in the afternoon, so she was always there in the afternoons when I got home. She’d tell me, You need to do this, this, and this, period. And every Saturday morning before I could watch cartoons, my mother had a list of things for me to do beforehand. My wife’s story is very different. My wife’s mother worked in the evenings from 3:30 in the afternoon until 1 o’clock at night, which meant she was never home. So, for a large portion of her life, my wife’s sister essentially raised her. Their mom would usually be sleeping during the day. Of course, when we got together,

THE MENTERVIEWS: #4 of 6  Rufus is a college history professor who hails from Southern California. He’s in his mid-forties, and is happily partnered to Casey, his husband of 6 years and soulmate of 9. His gentle, even manner belied the force of his c...

THE MENTERVIEWS: #3 of 6  Tony is a digital artist, father, educator, animation expert, and soft-spoken teddy bear of a man living and loving in Memphis. He’s part of this relationships series, which I’ve lovingly dubbed The Menterviews, and he had a...

THE MENTERVIEWS: #2 of 6  Men are visual, but they can't always see the obvious, you know? Carlos is a fine artist in his early forties. He's a happily married east coast transplant to the corn belt, and he took some time to share his take on the complexities of relationships and what he refers to as modern dating. ♥ Some guys just couldn't wait to have kids. I was living in Atlanta and a couple of my friends and I — I know this sounds bad — but we were either trying to have long-term girlfriends or just hook up with as many girls as we could. Not that it was a contest or anything, we just wanted to have fun, you know? And then, slowly but surely the guys were like, Oh, I think this is the one. Then they'd stop coming out to the bars with us, and we were like, What are you doing? And they’d say, I'm gonna get married and we were like, What are you doing? And they’d go, I want to have kids, and it was ... I was ... like, What? But I think that was the prevailing thing with a lot of people. As an artist — and in lots of other careers, too — in order to be successful, you have to be extremely self-centered and focused just on what you do. I used to think, maybe because of my parents and all my other relatives, that maybe I should have brought kids into the world, but it's all fun and good when the kids are hanging out with the grandparents and having fun, but you should only bring a child into this world if that's exactly what you want to do. To me, it's extremely irresponsible, breeding just to carry on the family name, or because somebody wants more Catholics in the world, or they think that's what God wants. It has to be an important decision, and for a long time I thought I made a mistake, you know? I mean, I love children, but I love other people's children. Then I thought for awhile, since all my friends were doing it, maybe I should, too. But I could never find someone I wanted to do all that with. I think having sex is one thing, but once the child is there, you really have to like that person, and I don't think most people think that through thoroughly. Once the kinky sex is done and you have a two year-old and a three year-old running around and the laundry needs to be done and you’re complaining, I'm like, Did you think about all this stuff when you were all googly-eyed? Maybe you should have kept your pants on. You look at magazines and stuff, and they don't show you the dark side of marriage and having kids. It's not glamorous; it's not fun; it's work. Just being married is work. The problem is that this whole idea of manhood is skewed. I know how to hunt, but I can't skin a deer, and I know somewhat how to fix a car, but there are plenty of men who know how to be manly and solve problems and do all that shit, but they also beat their wives, molest their kids, and drink too much, know what I mean? My biggest pet peeve is for somebody to tell me to man up. It is the most offensive thing you can say to a man. Because what you’re saying is, based on your judgmental criteria, somehow I am not living up to what you think a man should be. I’ve had people say that to me, Oh, why don’t you just ‘man up?’" And I’m like, If you ever say that to me again, and I decide to ‘man up,’ you’d better not be standing next to me, because you don’t want to see me manning up the way you think I ought to. I will put your ass through the wall. Manning up, to me, means that you think my own demonstration of manhood is less than what you think it should be. I think men should be offended by that. That’s like me saying, Well, if you weren’t so fat, I’d sleep with you. It’s saying your physicality isn’t woman enough for somebody to find you attractive. It’s bullshit is what it is. Can you be a quiet guy and own an antique bookstore, or do you have to be a fireman? Can you be a poet, or an artist, or a librarian and still be a man? I think society’s all screwed up about this,

THE MENTERVIEWS: #1 of 6  You'll pardon my delay in posting, but I've been working on men for the past few weeks. For the better part of a month I've been talking to men about their take on relationships, what they think about sex and commitment, what makes partnership stick — you know, the good stuff. I didn't honestly have any other goal in mind when I started this, other than to begin a personal dialogue with a few good men. Every one I spoke to had a lot to teach me, and in the course of our conversations, they each seemed to flip a switch in my understanding by letting me poke around in their private thoughts, and most surprisingly, each man gifted me with a piece of a puzzle I didn't even know I'd been missing. What follows is the first of these conversations. It comes from Bruce — in snippets and not entirely verbatim — but it's him. Bruce is in his fifties and he's got a voice that's as pleasant and smooth as Georgia sweet tea. Bruce owns and operates a trucking business in the south. He was on the road when we spoke, hauling parts from Texas through to the Carolinas. Typical of many of these talks, what began as a twenty minute interview fanned out past an hour, stirring the pot of our preconceived ideas, and it left us with lots more to think about. Bruce invited me in — and you, too, honey — to share these love notes from the road. ♥   My grandfather, he gave me his view of man's role. It was about being accountable, responsible, embracing the female. Grandpa taught me that being a real man is about embracing the woman's needs above his own. If you truly love a woman, you'll find yourself putting her needs above yours. Most women I dated were astonished by this. They thought I was either too good to be true or that I had ulterior motives and hidden agendas. But it was Grandapa's training, and that's just the way I was. Some didn't receive it well, and it caused me to look for a specific type of woman. I had to create some guidelines for myself; I developed standards. I started by looking for genuineness. I wasn't looking so much for the talk or the trimmings, because it's their actions that have the bigger impact on you than anything. After seventeen years of marriage, I'm single. People look at you funny when you say "divorced", like you're broken or something. So I say "single". That keeps it less complicated. She called me on the road one day and said she couldn't do it anymore. One thing we'll never be able to control is another person's emotions. You can't make somebody love you. If we had a better understanding of the other person's interests, goals, intentions, then it would prepare us for real relationships. People need to establish what type of relationship they desire. There's risk in everything, but it's not fair to enter into without truthful, honest expectations of the other person. With men — we're conquerors, right. So, the way she carries herself is important. If women go out there exposing themselves and men's hormones get to boiling, well, that's no good. I know I might get flack for this, but you can't expose yourself so much to men that it's overwhelming. You don't have to be buttoned all the way up your neck, but don't be showing everything, either. That puberty stuff had me wanting to reach out and grab everything walking by, but I didn't because Grandpa had planted that seed for me. So, I knew early on how to sit down, look a young lady in the eye, and have a real conversation with her. That fabric has worn thin for most now, and things are different. Women, don't ever settle for less. But if you meet a man who exceeds your standards, try it. Don't deny yourself something good. Risk it. There are going to be issues in any relationship, but how you handle them will determine if it works or not. If you're gun shy about getting into a relationship, though, do everybody a favor and just don't do it. A real man will be able to accept it if you're not ready.

  Dumping toxic people from our lives is an important step toward making healthy changes, but what does it mean when the person being dumped is you? Being dumped hurts. There's no pretty way to say it. A long time ago, within the span of ...

There are a bunch of sayings about turning corners and pages on the way to happiness, but is there a phrase that applies to what happens when you roll right into it? I was driving home from nowhere special last week—heading west toward the mountains—when an unmistakable feeling of euphoria cracked open somewhere between my ears and melted through me like sweet candy filling. It was like a mega dose of Novocaine that radiated from beyond my face and tingled all the way down through my extremities. It caught me off guard, and just to be sure I wasn’t suffering a mental collapse in traffic, I said my name and address aloud and repeatedly gripped and released the steering wheel at 10 and 2 for added confirmation. It was evening time, and even more than the stunning visual of sunlight dipping back behind the jagged horizon, I was captivated by the excitement of simply being alive in that moment. My friend Theresa once told me that she met her fiancée, she noticed the trees were greener, the air felt fresher—and that’s saying a lot if you lived in Manhattan like she did. She said every experience was shot through with joy. I can’t say what happened to me was falling in love, but then again, maybe it was: I have work I enjoy; I get to bask in the loving company of some truly wonderful people in my life; I know I am valued by friends and family near and far; I have peace of mind and boundless creativity; and I’m rarely without a good word for anyone who'll hear it. All told, my moment of sweet Novocaine showed up to remind me that all really was and is well in my world. We’re human, which means our brains need to make sense of what’s going on in and around us. When disaster strikes and bad things happen to good people, we scramble for answers to help us make sense of it all. In those moments when it really hits the fan, we need to know how to respond. This makes sense to me. And having things make sense in the midst of catastrophe can mean the difference in our safety and survival. And what of happiness? Based on my own recent experience, I rolled right into happiness and, as far as I could tell, there wasn’t any good reason why I did. Granted, I have a whole lot to be thankful for, and I know it, but why the overflow? I wondered. What was with that amazing sensation? There I was, attempting to pick apart the joy that had so blissfully descended on me, all for no better reason that I needed to make sense of it. Some people will not only look their gift horse in the mouth, but they’ll check its teeth and ears, ask who’s going to feed it, and threaten to send it back if they can’t make it run! And that’s what we do when we try to fit our happiness into tiny little compartments of understanding and reason. In other words, happiness doesn’t make sense, and it's not supposed to. The thing about true happiness is that it’s a lot like love in that it exists independent of what we’ve done and how we've determined it should look when it shows up; who we are; happiness is a state of being that we enter into. More specifically, I think, it enters into us or makes itself known in delicious ways that surprise and sweeten our lives. Happiness and love visit with us for as long as we’ll have them. I don’t believe that we’re ever really without love and joy and happiness, but it’s up to us to throw open the doors when they come knocking. Happiness caught me off guard that day, and filled me up when I wasn’t necessarily expecting it to. As it worked its way through my system, I caught myself trying to compartmentalize my feelings by checking first for signs of mental collapse and upheaval. After realizing I was indeed safe—and happy—I gave myself to the overflow, and it was divine. Maybe you don’t think of yourself as a gift-horse-resisting, happiness rationalizing type, but it might do you some good to consider the implications for a moment. Let’s say you say you want to be happy. If that's the case,