Noticing...

What a difference a sleep makes!  A whole 6 hours and I feel so much better.  We are still sick, but it's not so hard to bear when I'm not exhausted.

My friend Susannah told me about a book called 'The Happiness Trap', a Buddhist title if ever I heard one!  But it did get me thinking - it's so easy to believe that life will be better when I feel happy, and that happiness is invariable pinned to some external event or circumstance.

I stagger from one side of the road to the other: on a good day, I remember that I can be at peace (which is my version of happiness), regardless of what is happening.  On a bad day, I scan the horizon for some glimmer of hope that 'god loves me', that he has thrown some little token from the heavens, some external event that will make me happy.

But what makes me happy today, will not be what makes me happy tomorrow.  Moving into this flat made me happy then, now the flat can frustrate me because it's too small for us.  In and out.  Up and down.

Events and therefore - externally dependent - happiness all depend on my perspective at any given moment.  Noticing my perspective may be a far wiser course of action than any other I may undertake at present.

Just noticing.  Not healing or hiding or hoping for something different.  Just noticing.