The sun is always shining

Life was hard the past few months.  Maybe not hard, but dark.  Ok, that still sounds a little melodramatic for what it really was.  Let’s say it was dimly lit.  I moved to a new place, old roommates moved away, a lot of uncertainties about career path, friendships, current job security, finances, relationships.  I was really in a funk.  Or maybe a mild state of depression.  Either way, life was lacking luster.  Sometimes I wondered why I couldn’t seem to pull myself out of it.  I thought about those people out there, somewhere (I think I saw them on Oprah), who wake up everyday and “choose happiness”.  You know the ones, the bright-eyed bushy-tailed folks who say they make a conscious choice everyday before they get out of bed (and probably step into white fluffy slippers) to be grateful and make this ‘the best day ever!’  These are also the ones you’ll hear touting the tried and true cliche “When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade!”.  Well to be quite honest, too much lemonade makes my stomach sick.  

I just do not buy into the idea that we can choose joy each and every day and in doing so that we can avoid the hurts and suffering that is life.  Those people who put on a smile every day as part of their morning routine (sometimes forcedly), well I just wonder how hard the fall will be when they finally crumble and enter back into the reality that most of us are living in each and every day.   Not to say that all reality is misery.  But I have come to a place where I believe, for our own mental health, we must enter into suffering that comes our way.  We must feel the emotions that our bodies conjure up rather than stuff them in a box and ship them away deep into the do-not-enter places in our soul.  

But I think maybe I have gotten into a place where I have allowed myself a bit too much grace in that direction.  Maybe I have allowed myself to sit in the pit for too long, beginning a habit of looking at the glass as half empty.  I must find a way to remember that even in the midst of pain, even in the darkness, the funk, there is indeed a joy or a hope for something better which motivates a change of spirit or growth.  We must not allow ourselves to suffer for suffering’s sake itself.  We should embrace and take solace in the pain as means to an end.  A better end.

The other day I was flying out of Atlanta to head back home to Chicago.  It was January 2nd and, if the weather acts as any sort of indicator of the New Year, 2009 was looking pretty bleak.  Cold, rainy and clouds as far as the eye could see (and these weren’t big-puffy-happy clouds, these were I’m-going-to-make-your-life-miserable-today clouds).  Not a single ray of sunshine to be seen.  My flight was delayed.  Two days prior I thought I had a good feeling about this new year, but things were looking the contrary if you buy into foreshadowing signs via Mother Nature.

A couple hours later, I was finally settled on the plane in my seat next to the window. (I’ll admit, I am a window snob traveler. I must sit next to the window, leave the shade pulled up for my viewing pleasure and feel free to lean as close to the window as I like to get a good view of the tiny world below.  If the other non-window seat passengers want to see out the window, they should have preferenced a window seat in their travel plans.)  

As we rumbled into ascension, the clouds quickly overtook my view of the ground, resolving into what felt like a sea of dirty white endlessness.  I kept looking out the window, hoping for a glimpse of the intricate maze of interstate ramps or perfectly geometric plots of land below and that feeling of wonder at how tiny it all looked that makes air travel so wonderfully Alice In Wonderland-like.  But no, the clouds were too thick and I was forced to acquiesce.  As I leaned back into my seat,  all of a sudden, a burst of color took me by surprise.  Out of the window I watched as we broke through the darkness and now were sailing above a sea of white shining in the sun’s glow against the perfectly pitched blue sky.  It was like an awakening!  The sun was still shining, bright as ever, beyond the clouds.  It had never missed a beat, it was always shining.  The sun is ALWAYS shining.  It hit me with such sheer clarity.  

 The sun is always shining.  Yes, the clouds, the storms, the wind and rain come.  And it must.  But even when we are miserable, even when we can’t see it or feel it or even see signs of it, we must remember that the sun is always shining above it all.  And as we hold out for it patiently, anxiously, it will soon return and restore us to light again.

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