Happiness lies within

Happiness lies within

Sunday October 24, 2010
By: Gina Roman


The phone just rang and as soon as I picked up this woman went off blabbering away at a million words per minute that I was unable to catch a single word until I said ok, “stop! Who are you and how can I help you!?” Annoyed as one can get when trying to concentrate to get something done I came close to snapping at this woman and hang up on her immediately after that because I am trying to write and have dinner at the same time. I was barely getting really into my word game here but baahm! The phone rings and I lost my train of thought! It took me a few seconds to gain my coolness and be grateful that I am home on Sunday evening doing something I like and enjoy doing unlike this poor woman on the other line so I decided to be polite and take the time to listen to her for a few minutes.
She was calling from a financial services company trying to sell life insurance and then transferred me to take a survey to rate her services. She asked me something that caught my attention which was, “are you single or married?” I said, “Single.” So she inquired “felizmente soltera?” happily single? I thought about it for a moment until I replied “pues, a veces.” Well, sometimes. Honestly speaking I can say exactly that, “sometimes.” There are moments where I think that it’d be nice to come home to someone but then I snap out of it and I panic and my heart starts beating out of control. If I were married and had children then I’d have to give up my workouts, my writing, perhaps my job, and my moments alone to reflect. Perhaps not completely but I’d definitely not have as much time for "ME" anymore. I don‘t know what would happen, maybe I’d become extremely depressed and die in agony. LOL!

When I was a little girl I used to love writing and as far back as my memory can take me, I’d always keep a diary of everything I went through, like when I rebelled against my father’s overly strict character, I felt like a bird when someone cut its wings he lost his freedom, got depressed and died. So writing has always been my sanctuary, my get away from reality for a short while so I when I get interrupted I can get very irritated and turn into a monster just like when I’m working out and someone approaches me, I know they’re just trying to be friendly or sometimes some random dude may want to hook up or see what he can get; I like to think of my time at the gym as my pedestal where no one can reach me, my place and time where I can get away from everyone and release all my bad vibes without having to hurt anyone.Ha, ha! Or when I don’t eat at my right times I want to put a huge sign saying "don't mess with a hungry girl!" When it comes to my meals of the day I really go by the clock and I get anxious when I don't eat because I don’t function well without food. I get angry, annoyed to the point where I can’t even stand myself. Yuck!
Writing is one of the best gifts I’ve ever been given and even though I don’t even come close to being a professional writer, I still love it because it helps me dig into the most profound space in my heart and get to know myself more. It helps me reflect on what I learn every day and understand many things for instance accepting the fact that sometimes we cannot have everything we want in life, perhaps because God has traced better plans for us way before we were born.
Going back to that comment “happily single,” it made me think of how easy life can be and how complicated humans make our existence miserable for no reason at all. When we want something we do whatever it takes to get it, once we are there we don’t want it anymore, we want something else, it is the same thing with relationships. We want to be with someone, we start a relationship, some of us make it to marriage, commit to this person for life and a few years down the line, “ooops, this person wasn’t the one.” The same way a child is thrilled when he discovers a new toy or another way to get entertained, he gets excited for a while but as soon as he becomes weary of it, he drops it and goes on to discover something else. At least children are the most innocent and transparent human beings in this existence and it is in their nature to behave like that. What about adults though? What excuse do we have?
Nowadays there are very few marriages that make it till the end and I wonder, what did they have to go through to survive the turmoil, the black and white, the good and bad moments together? To this day it is a mystery but I will ask a very happy and solid couple I know. I’ll call her Virginia; a few weeks ago she was diagnosed with leukemia which can turn into cancer. I don’t understand completely what is going on there and I don’t want to ask because everyone is very sensitive at this time. Virginia is one of the most positive women I’ve ever known and despite the fact she’s going through one of the worst moments she still wants to live. She’s being really strong and she is standing up to this battle against death, she’s fighting with every single particle of strength within. Her husband has been there for her every single step of the way. They love life and they are holding on to it because they are so full of peace and love each other on top of everything. That is my example of a beautiful and perfect marriage, they have overcome many obstacles together, they accept one another as they are, and they don’t care about outer beauty because as Virginia once told me, all of that comes second. The beginning stages of a relationship are all physical but that wears out eventually and it becomes second. There are a million more important things ike the moments you go through together, that's when real love is proved.
Thinking about them made me ponder about life, it is a long and intense process which brings us precise moments that touch us very deep inside and give us strength to either stop our existence or keep going with those who truly love us, accept us the way we are and are able to forgive and let go of the bad and painful moments. It is moments like these when we really get to know ourselves and allow us to find the purpose that life has for us. God manifests himself to every single one of us in different ways and I personally hadn’t felt him so close, so strong and so direct to me until last year when I had an awful wreck and I thought I wasn’t going to pull through. At that moment I neglected to see it but now that I look back, I know he was there to give me another opportunity, another chance because he has a plan for me, this plan that I haven’t been able to decipher quite yet but I keep getting closer to it day by day. I was too occupied trying to “recover” other people and things that were not part of God’s plans for me. Life has given me many opportunities and has taught me many lessons for which I am very fortunate because not everyone has chances in this long journey.
Virginia and her husband have also taught me a very important lesson; we may spend many years in life looking for happiness, we may run away from ourselves searching in a million places yet we ignore the fact that it’s been there and it’ll always lie within us.
Moments like these are priceless so let's make peace not war.