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Saturday, November 5, 2011

NO NEED TO PROVE OUR RIGHT TO BE HAPPY

     Some people are grouchy by habit. Even when they feel good, or happen to be enjoying themselves, they won't admit it because it would blow their whole grouch facade. They are professional victims, and if we're honest, perhaps we all can be a little bit that way.
     We never want anyone to know that we are having too much fun or feeling too good. It's so much easier to share our scars and our wounds and our hardships. I'm not sure where the inclination to be secretive about our pleasures comes from. Perhaps we feel that we don't really deserve them, so that if we are found out, they will be ripped from us. Or perhaps the only kind of attention we know how to get is pity, so we troll for it with our misery, and by being mopey. We unknowingly imprison ourselves with so many kinds of false beliefs.
     Surely it's ok to express our joy and happiness without guilt, and if others don't like it, or can't handle it, then that's on them. We don't have to pretend that life is all burden and drudgery and try to somehow prove that we are working harder and struggling more than anyone else as if our worth were tied up in that. We have value because we are alive, not because of how much we produce or how hard we work. Our lives can be an expression of the joy of our existence. They need not be some test of endurance where the one who suffers the most wins.

My worth is not tied up with anyone else or any thing in particular. I need not prove my right to happiness with a lot of hard work and struggle. My ability for joy is the direct result of my having been born.