Happiness For No Good Reason: Change - As Life is Shaping Me - by Xan

It’s not that change in itself is good or bad — it’s simply inevitable. The question is much more whether we welcome it, allow it, don’t resist it. Life will have its way with us, and its way is sometimes pleasurable and sometimes difficult. My experience is more and more that resistance is the key ingredient to ensuring a difficult or unpleasant result.

Two and one-half years now since the death of my beloved husband Michael, it was suggested that I write about how and why that experience catapulted me into a generalized and lasting state of being best described as Happy for No Good Reason. That seems like an oxymoron, since I surely miss him and the abundant love with which he showered me. There were irritations contained in our daily life together that I am happy to no longer live with, as surely any couple of over twenty years duration would acknowledge, were they being really honest. But the Happiness for No Reason I write of is of another character entirely.

In the first hours, days, even months after Michael’s very abrupt passage from his body I was faced with an enormous mountain of quick decisions, physical and psychic work, and logistics galore. He had created a complex network of hopeful and concrete plans for building new communities and an equally complex financial structure to try to actualize them. Just like the mortgage bubble that was due to burst in the weeks following his death — and which was an inextricable part of the financial underpinnings of his efforts — the entire structure came tumbling down. I was left holding the bag.

I knew from the day of his death that I would not be able to keep our house, which also meant the cohousing community that we had created and lived in. I had his lifetime of architectural design work and two storage units full of blueprints, business files and equipment to sift and make disposal decisions about, as well as a home full of “stuff”. Three weeks later I fell off a ladder, breaking my right arm. It was a setup for a long, lost period groveling in overwhelm, pain, and despair.

However, within a very few days I found myself walking to the hills above our home which border Annadel state park, heading for a labyrinth known only to a few folks who walk and tend it periodically. I was being with what is, the immensity of life and death, the sudden end of my marriage, my feelings of betrayal and whatever else I might now know about my partner, his legacy, the summation of his life.

As I began to walk the labyrinth I discovered that I found his life as lived was with deep integrity to his vision, his sense of purpose, his truth, his Self. He did it with flair and with an immense love which he spread over several communities full of people who loved him in return. Had he paid attention to the annoying details of income and business practices which would have made my life with or without him easier, he simply couldn’t have managed to keep those more primary values of his intact. And this integrity, being true to himself, was much of what made me love him so deeply in the first place!

Aha! Total acceptance and forgiveness were the only options. That settled, I simply threw myself headlong into the many-layered tasks of wrapping up a person’s life, a business, a short sale on our home in the worst possible moment in the market, a marriage and an era of my life, all with a broken wing.

My own aging and mortality also came into play now, as I could never have the same relationship to men, sex, community, my body or myself as I had enjoyed previously. My financial options were narrowed and uncertain and, as it turned out, I had a good year ahead of a series of problems with my arm and both hands. My desire had been to return to my life as a fiber artist, requiring nimble fingers — not a certain part of my future.

So, I fell, exhausted, into my newly rented home, less than five months after that fateful morning when Michael escaped all this. And in taking stock I slowly awakened to the ever-present sense of gratitude and appreciation that I’ve been living in ever since. My morning prayers are filled with acknowledgement of the incredible gift of this intricately interconnected, fabulously exquisite Life that moves within me and all around me in every place my eyes come to rest. I also carry an intense gratitude to the communities of people who loved Michael and loved me and who spontaneously created a generous fund to allow me to supplement my social security sufficiently to live in independent simplicity for many years.

And, the Mystery! The awe and wonder of the Unknown! This also sustains me. Surrender I have practiced for 45 years or so through the latihan (spiritual exercise) of Subud and through longer acquaintance with psychedelics. It is no longer a practice; it simply is now part of me. I fear little, I anticipate the further gifts that both the unknown and hardships bring.

If it’s still not clear  “how” I got to this Happy realm (as someone suggested), I’d have to say that the basic elements would be letting go of attachments to outcome; forgiveness of self and others; a willingness to be vulnerable and to surrender to what is which brings, amazingly, much strength; and gratitude for experiencing the ongoing presence of the Mystery.

Being Happy for No Good Reason: this makes it worth growing old.

                                                                                                                      —Alexandra Hart