The Art of Mastering Joy

I smile a lot. Even as a baby there are pictures of me giggling all over myself. To this day, I still giggle. Heck there are days when I am down right giddy.

Over the past two years I have had a lot of adversity in my life (Katrina, bankruptcy, chronic unemployment, health issues. . .) yet, I still smile. For some odd reason this seems to confuse/bother people. "How can you always be so happy?" asked a co-worker. "Because I woke up this morning" is usually my response. This seems to infuriate my co-worker. He went on to say, "There are homeless people who just woke up this morning. There has to be more to it!" He was actually angry that I could find joy in just being alive. This concerned me for a couple of reasons, 1) why would this person take such a vested interest in my emotions and 2) what the heck is wrong with being joyous.

That day after speaking with my co-worker I realized that he wasn't the first person to question me about my joy. Months prior to my conversation with him another co-worker and I were working on a project and I just laughed through the whole thing. Understand I work in law enforcement. Most of the stuff is just too ridiculous not to laugh. That person stopped during our session to ask me if I always laughed at everything. I thought about it for a second and said, "Yep. Beats crying all of the time."

These incidents combined caused me to pause and think about why I am so joyous. Again, it's been a rough few years for me. But the bottom line is: life is too short to be angry, bitter and whining all of the time.