Seeing the Rainbow

Sometimes it's good to not analyse or try to control everything.  Just sit back and enjoy something for what it is.  It's all the more precious because it's impermanent. Flowers, pets, cake, rainbows, rainbow cake! friends, life.

Reaching out for for happiness doesn't seem to work.  Happiness, or contentment, is a by-product of doing what you feel is important to you.  I believe it's a feeling that life is full, you are comfortable, you are happy with what you have - you have no longing for "things". This leaves you free to be creative and feel a sense of accomplishment.  In "The Antidote" by Oliver Burkeman, he describes the "negative path": the idea that the more we strive for happiness and other feelings like security and confidence, the less we achieve them. So, paradoxically, it is by thinking more about the downers in life, such as the inevitability of death, the inescapability of suffering or the impossibility of security, that we achieve something like happiness. He concludes that although extreme insecurity is a bad thing, it provides one huge benefit: you cannot be worried about losing your security if you don't have any to lose in the first place.  This is quite a freeing way of thinking, and is certainly how I've felt since my cancer diagnosis.

That's why cancer makes you look at things differently.  The security you thought you had is taken away.  You are forced to face up to impermanence and embrace impermanent things.

I enjoyed making an ephemeral piece of art today. I was inspired to create some environmental art in the style of Andy Goldsworthy.  In the past, I don't think I would have understood the thinking behind this at all.  Spending a long time making something and knowing that it will just deteriorate?  But I was really absorbed in the work for a good couple of hours and enjoyed other people coming up to ask about it.  It was a very pure mindful activity, making something for the sake of it and creating something beautiful but non-lasting.  I made it in Bramford Community Garden and plan to do a similar activity for some Girl Guides we are working with tomorrow evening.  

What do you think?

Flourish is a word commonly used these days instead of happiness, When we flourish, we often feel happy, but that's simply an effect of the real goal, which is to live in accordance with our natures, doing the things we do best to the best of our abilities. Rather than seeing this as the indirect route to happiness, we should see it as the direct route to what it actually is. Happiness is neither the journey nor the destination, it's simply something we encounter on the path when we travel the right way.