My day begins. The sun is out, the temperatures are warming. This is the season of color and light, my season.

I’m going to see Heidi the florist for bouquets to take to the Memory Care Unit of the Mansion. The aides there were upset that the Mansion got bouquets but not the MC unit.

They are right.

I’m also bringing flowers to Laura at the gym, she has been watching over me and helping me return to the gym. This has been very good for me.

It is very important to acknowledge the magical helpers who have reached out to me and held my hand as I make my way through life.

I hope to write an essay on happiness – what it really is, and what I have learned about bringing it into my life. It makes me happy to think about writing it, but I also know well that happiness is fleeting and momentary.

We humans don’t get to be happy all the time.

I start the day usually by reading one of my spiritual books. Today, I read Thomas Merton’s Come Into The Silence, a beautiful way to begin my day. I’ll share this:

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My Day  Begins

“We are warmed by the fire, not by the smoke of the fire.

We are carried over the sea by a ship, not by the wake of a ship.

So too, what we are is to be sought in the invisible depths of our own being, not in our outward reflection in our own acts.

We must find our real selves not in the froth stirred up by the impact of our being upon the beings around us, but in our own soul…

Why do we have to spend our lives striving to be something that we could never be if we only knew what we wanted?

Why do we waste our time doing things which if we only stopped to think about them are just the opposite of what we were made for?

We cannot be ourselves unless we know ourselves.” 

-Thomas Merton, No Man Is An Island.

I want to take a shot at free will and mastering my own life. I want to be free of wanting things I can’t have, don’t need, and aren’t what I really want. Happiness is not really about being happy, it’s about the freedom to be me.