Maybe Happiness is Green

Happy New Day! I actually feel kind of awake today so that's a good start.

I was writing a friend earlier today about just general stuff when all the sudden I started writing about the bamboo plant in my studio. My thought was, well that's odd but went with it and realized that I have one damn happy plant for some reason. I mean I gave it food a few days ago when I changed it's water but it feels really happy and I'm finding that momentarily fascinating. I told my friend it feels like it's singing. My brain is looking for a reason and says there should be but what if it's just happy. Period. And now I'm musing what that would be like and why would I wait for a reason to 'feel' happy. Why not create your happiness?

Ok, everyone will have a different idea of what happiness looks like to them so lets just get that out of the way now. But do we experience happiness as a consequence of circumstance, a consolation prize for some coveted experience or can you just decide to be happy and then be that? Is your happiness conditional, intrinsic, or a choice? I think a lot of people define their happiness by when they're not. "If I win the lottery THEN I'll be happy." "If this or that wasn't the way it was then I'd be happy."  I dunno, when you think of it that way then it's like you withhold that feeling from yourself until conditions are met and that seems self defeating to me. Reminds me of the voices that tell me you can't have desert till you finish your spinach. Uggh, I was that parent.

So I'm asking my bamboo plant what happiness is since it seems to have a handle on it for the moment. Till now, I thought my notion of it was pretty good. I've learned to think of happiness (in my definition) as a choice in most cases. That's been challenging lately as I've learned that choosing happiness while grieving is a weird and interesting thing. But sitting here now, writing about it with my bamboo singing to me, I feel like I don't understand it at all - or more to the point, I have more to learn about it. I will remind people again if you haven't read my other blog entries - this is what an intuitive person lives with all the time. It's how we see the world. We learn from everything we're mindful of and try to be more open all the time. So, when I come into my studio, I say hi to all the paintings, stones, plants and whatever energies floating around and listen to them for a bit. It's like a relationship with all the energies you can perceive. You listen to them and they listen to you - you communicate and share. Everything has a voice. So, when I say I'm listening to my bamboo, I'm listening to it as though it could talk because to me, it does. And happiness has the best voice.

By the way, if you have occasion to ask your bamboo what happiness is, you aren't going to get a very coherent answer in people ways. My bamboo's answer feels like happiness is green, sucking up water, having a moist place to hang out - pretty much being a bamboo plant - which I find both profound and amusing. I heard a quote once 'I love you like a flower loves the sun.' How do you define an experience like that except poetically? It's too big fit into tiny words. Like a flower loves the sun. My bamboo says happiness is green. Maybe for today I'll believe happiness is green and see what it brings me.

It's not that easy being green
Having to spend each day the color of the leaves
When I think it could be nicer being red, or yellow or gold
Or something much more colorful like that

It's not easy being green
It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things
And people tend to pass you over 'cause you're
Not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water
Or stars in the sky

But green's the color of Spring
And green can be cool and friendly-like
And green can be big like an ocean, or important
Like a mountain, or tall like a tree

When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why, but why wonder why
Wonder, I am green and it'll do fine, it's beautiful
And I think it's what I want to be.

Kermit the Frog (Muppets)

and if now you just have to watch it.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpiIWMWWVco