Have you ever taken your kids to something you loved as a child? Maybe driving around looking at Christmas lights or catching snow on your tongue. And you are so thrilled to share this exchange with them and they look at you and within 32 seconds say 'I'm bored' 'this sucks' 'can we go home now'. There is a part of me that really hopes this is just me but also I really hope you're nodding along because we all need the camaraderie.
So when this happens, you just want to shake your kids and say 'THIS IS AMAZING!! I WOULD HAVE LOVED THIS AS A KID!!'. But you/I don't. We just go home and slink into our beds and wonder what went wrong.
I was listening to a YouTube clip today, as I do, it was an Abraham Hicks clip, and if you don't know who that is well you just gotta find that rabbit hole for yourself, but they said this amazing thing that I really want to make into a t-shirt:
BE DELIGHTABLE
They were speaking about how the universe is always trying to show us and give us delightful things and how these delights are all around us whenever we choose to look for them, but WE are the ones that must be delightable. We must be able to take in that information and find the delight in it and once we get really good at doing that we will suddenly be able to see so many more delightful things all around us.
As I type this, there is a literal war/genocide happening on the other side of the world. It is hard for me to write a bunch of fluffy things about looking for warm fuzzies while there are mothers in a desert looking for their children, looking for a safe place to sleep, looking for clean food or water. And maybe you struggle with that as well. How can we be happy and optimistic when there is so much suffering constantly?
What I try to remember is that our being happy, or looking for the good, looking for the helpers like Mr. Rogers says doesn't take away happiness from someone else, happiness and joy are not unlimited resources. But in the reverse, our being miserable and only looking at the bad doesn't take away that misery for others either.
Of course our hearts can ache for these things, and we should open ourselves up to look for the ways that we can help focus on those helpers, find delight in the fact that there are people out there fighting the good fight. If we can be delighted by that, our positive energy will multiply, give more energy to those that are world weary, build more positive energy so when the survivors come out of this there is a world in which they can find a light for themselves.
This really wasn't the post I was planning on writing about. It was going to just be cute and talk about my grumpy husband, and I am delighted by that. I am delighted that ideas grow from seemingly nowhere and become a message I never intended to have. I am struggling to find the balance of enjoying all I have and to be grateful while respecting those suffering half a world away and still maintaining my energy around these very distressing times and I have to keep a safe distance from it or that darkness will pull me under, but in whatever small way, I hope this little piece makes a teeny tiny difference to build a light. Wherever it is needed.
Be delightable. Because if we aren't then what is the point?
