Ceaselessly Flowing Joy: A Happiness Tale
I grew up on the shores of Michigan’s Saginaw Bay, a vast body of fresh water that stretched from my bare feet all the way to the horizon. And it was the bay, I believe, that taught me most of what I know about life.
I watched its moods come and go, from its grand, angry storms, whipping the waves into white caps six feet high, to the reverent mornings when the rose and gold of sunrise colored its placid waters. Its colors changed hourly and from season to season. I never tired of it.
On summer nights, I would lie in bed and listen through my open window to the waves lapping on the shore as I drifted off to sleep. Their ceaselessness was a wonder to me, and a comfort. Even on the stillest nights, when not a single leaf moved on the trees, the waves were always there: washing up, rolling back, washing up, rolling back, moved by some nameless force within the bay’s depths.
During my teenage years, as I was learning to cope with the drama of adolescent mood swings, I would walk along the shore until I got lost in the bay’s rhythm and became one with it somehow. Then, little of me remained. Not my excitement, or my sorrow, or my loneliness or longing. My moods were nothing more than weather, changing with the circumstantial winds.
Overhead, cottonwood leaves rustled in the breeze and gulls sailed high beyond the clouds until they, like me, almost disappeared. I smelled the seaweed and the sand and the fragrance of the water itself. I laughed at the comical sandpipers playing tag with the lapping waves. I felt the sun on my face, and the breeze. And inside, I felt the rhythms of my pulse and of my breathing, moved by some silent force within my depths. And I felt its peace and endlessness washing through me, and knew it would ceaselessly flow forever, and that its name was Joy.
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