[happy camping]

To those of you.

I feel like everyone has a few things about them that need figuring out. A lot of people have their troubles, and sometimes it seems they feel so helpless because a situation might be terrible, just beyond terrible, and over it and underneath it too. It seems, to some people, that terrible things are ubiquitous and happiness is a distant myth.

Some people see that misery is the only consistency. It’s a sad truth that bad things happen, but why should anyone, regardless of their circumstances, embrace that when there are other things…?

The thing about happiness is that it exists independently of everything else, even all the terrible, crappy things going on around. Happiness isn’t as enigmatic as people think it is, I mean, it’s just there if someone wants it. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t get the job you wanted or if people have been treating you badly or if it seems like the world is just a terrible, terrible place.

As long as you are a person, as long as you are alive and breathing, with any pulse and any flow of air into your lungs, you exist and you hold the capability to be happy and to make others so and to make whatever kind of world it is we’re living in a better one, not even by saving the whales or by fighting crime but by loving. Loving the people that hate you, loving the people that don’t even know you, loving people and caring, and hoping, and hoping that people can love and hope someday too.

That’s all a choice, to those of you, and to those of us. Now which will it be?