There's no accounting for happiness

Today I got some unexpected happy tidings! That got me thinking -  happiness is something that comes to all, in different forms, and often when it's least expected. Those who have experienced happiness in its most extreme form - sudden happiness after months of despair, know how being blessed with unexpected happiness feels like. Just when we think all our efforts may amount to nothing and happiness has abandoned us, happiness may return in all its glory - its absence having made it even fonder. One simply can't predict when or where happiness will find us - one can just wait for it. I am sharing a lovely poem on happiness to celebrate my sudden tryst with happiness today.

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Happiness by Jane Kenyon*

There's no accounting for happiness

or the way it turns up like a prodigal

who comes back to the dust at your feet

having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?

You make a feast in honor of what

was lost, and take from its place the finest

garment, which you saved for an occasion

you could not imagine, and you weep night and day

to know that you were not abandoned,

that happiness saved its most extreme form

for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never

knew about, who flies a single-engine plane

onto the glassy landing strip, hitch-hikes

into town, and inquires at every door

until he finds you asleep mid-afternoon

as you so often are during the unmerciful

hours of your despair.

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It comes to the monk in his cell.

It comes to the woman sweeping the street

with a birch broom, to the child

whose mother has passed out from drink.

It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing

a sock, to the pusher, to the basket-maker,

and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots

in the night.

It even comes to the boulder

in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,

to rain falling on the open sea,

to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

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My thoughts:

I love those images of happiness being like a prodigal son who returns begging for forgiveness you cannot deny, or like an unknown rich uncle who knocks at every door till he reaches your house, to find you laid low in despair. Reminds me of a much-loved line from a poem by Hafiz:

Ever since happiness heard your name,

it has been running through the streets

trying to find you.

I also like how the poet's words describe happiness coming to all - sooner or later, even those in the unhappiest of circumstances. Happiness does not discriminate between old and young, rich and poor, hopeful and hopeless. It graces all.

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*Jane Kenyon (1947-1995) was an American poet noted for her quiet yet emotionally resonant verse which probes the inner psyche. Kenyon's work has often been compared with that of the English Romantic poet John Keats, especially in the way she attempts to redeem morbidity with a peculiar kind of gusto, by identifying with benign things and beings.