I know I should be happy to be alive.
Just getting out of bed each morning is an accomplishment. When you think about how life manifests itself, most life just is. Look at lichens and moss. They have hung around for billions of years in pretty much the same state as we see them today.
Now if you try to clean moss off something, it is hard as hell to do.
And most times, it comes right back. Moss wants to be moss. It does want to invent the toaster or run for congress; it just wants to be alive. And it has done is successfully, billions of times longer than humans have.
But humans as a species are not content to “just be.”
We want to be an astronaut, to be a chemist, to be a painter. Many people want the grass to be greener on the other side. This is a paradox that bears more research.
Our DNA just exists, too.
In fact, we are just the biological host of our DNA. We provide it a way to create new DNA, to perpetuate itself. DNA is not alive, but it tells our cells what to do. It directs our growth, our recovery from sickness, the scabs the form when we cut ourselves. All these things it does without our having to think about it. Our DNA just wants to produce more DNA.
This, if it was alive and could feel emotions, would make it happy.
And back to my original point, I want to be happy, to have some fun. Sometimes it is OK to just be alive, to exist. But other times, I want to be happy, to feel joy, to laugh out loud. I have not done this much in the past 6 months. I have done a lot of “just living.”
Finding something to look forward to may help me.
For Thanksgiving, we are flying to Boston. It will be a whirlwind trip, flying out early Thanksgiving morning, and flying back early Friday morning. But the good news is we will be with family for the holiday.
Thinking about this makes me happy.
What makes you happy?
