This poem expresses much of what I’ve been feeling lately–so much deep satisfaction with my life’s happenings.  Sometimes it feels almost wrong to be so pleased with things, to have so many elements fall into place.  But at the same time, I also believe in the line of this poem that “You are happy either way…”  Because I’ve nearly-always chosen happiness, despite the difficulties of my life circumstances.

Still sometimes I wonder if because I’ve had challenges in so many things for so long, what I will do if things are just good?  Will it cause my life to be boring and predictable?  Will I create small and unnecessary dramas because I don’t have big ones anymore?  Or will I start getting itchy for the open road and new possibilities (and dangers)?

Two nights ago (my first night sleeping on my own bed in our new house), I woke up realizing that I’d slept better than I had in years–deep, restful, peaceful sleep.  And now I’m looking forward to so many more nights of that ahead…and thinking that whatever the future might hold, for now I will just relax and see how things unfold from here…

So Much Happiness

by Naomi Shihab Nye

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records…..

Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.