Wednesday, July 18, 2007

A Merry Heart

I really took a vacation from this. Why is it so difficult to pick up again once you let your momentum die with a thing? This has been a major problem with me, and with so many others that I know, for the better part of my life. I always find beginnings exciting. I fairly sparkle with enthusiasm and grand ideas but all too soon, usually with the advent of the first real problem, I'm like one of those balloon figure-things that businesses put outside to attract attention - flailing away first at the sky then nearly flopping to the ground until a fresh blast of enthusiasm sets me upright again. Oh well. I do tend to accomplish a thing or two in my "outbursts" but it's the consistency factor that I'm lacking and where, it seems to me, real progress is made. In any event, here I am again intending to tilt at windmills for a bit.

Today I read Proverb 15:15 which states that "he who has a merry heart has a continual feast." It made me think how we generally turn this situation around in our heads to read that continual feasting will give us a merry heart or something similar. Favorable circumstances are to us the key to happiness, to joy and laughter and yet this word of wisdom reverses the order and tells us that keeping our hearts merry will produce this feeling of having supped sumptuously, drank lavishly, and connected socially in deeply satisfying ways. That is after all the essence of a true feast, is it not? This feast is described as continual, an everyday party for the soul. I like that. I have a great desire for this enduring type of fulfillment and satisfaction and must confess I have yet to experience it. The trick would seem to be in finding ways to keep the heart in a merry state of being. Interesting. In place of the usual quest for more of that outside ourselves which we perceive brings satisfaction, is put a preoccupation with merriment, laughter, joy, gratitude, good cheer and the maintenance of that condition. It obvious to me as I consider this, that there wouldn't be much room left over for worry, depression, criticism, complaining, listening to the news (I had to thrown that in. What a dreary litany of misery is most of what broadcasters call the news!) or all the "cares of the world" that we tend to be obsessively concerned with and involved in and which leaves us with that persistent, nagging, hungry feeling, eventually results in dis-ease of some kind or another. In another proverb we're told that "a merry heart does good like a medicine."

My new strategy then is to find ways to keep my heart, the wellspring of my life, in a state of merriment, of cheerfulness. This should be fun, although a challenge. Life is full of what could be interruptions to joy, unless that joy runs deeper than the earth's surface, and deeper than the physical heart of a human being. Each of us needs to discover our personal wellspring, that ultimate source of reality to which we must acquiesce for without this, maintaining a delighted heart is impossible. We must know that ultimately all is well, that the universe and all its beings are in capable, loving hands and that there is a sound plan and purpose at the bottom of it all. Then we can relax, like children growing up in a good home with loving parents. It's not difficult for such children to be merry, to consider themselves "lucky", and to fall asleep with satisfied smiles upon their sweet faces at night.

I keep going back to that which I've lost from childhood. It seems important somehow to get some of it back, to revive the fires that fueled my growth and progress for so many years, and which made life a continual banquet of adventure and discovery. What's your thoughts about this? I'd be interested to know - truly. Keep smiling.