The Many Languages of Kacco

This one in English…

Have you ever tried to write about being happy? I have never been really successful at that… It seems like I have much more to say about things going wrong. I guess I’m more like a news channel aren’t I?

Is everyone as shy as I am about being happy? There is some sort of guilt to having a great, enjoyable, fulfilling life. Because we know that not everyone is eager to go to work in the morning… We know that not everyone has a comfortable and relaxing home to go to…

Friends come to us with ordeals they cannot get through. Family knocks at the door with dilemas to solve. Co-workers bring up their share of challenges. I have seldom been visited by a friend who wanted to share his/her joy, unless some special event took place and he/she had a tale to tell. Just being happy seems to slip out of every conversation.

Knowing eveyone around us is dealing with a problem of any size or depth, who do we turn to when we want to talk about how beautiful life is? I feel like I’m operating some twisted form of torture when I try to insert my own happiness in a conversation… as if I was, each and every time, sweeping other people’s concerns with the back of my careless hand if I dared to mention how great things were for me. It’s like every pair of eyes staring at me shoots me dead for bluntly disrupting ”the way things are”. Makes me feel like I am bragging about it. As if I was showing off my new car in a Third World country!

And I am not even kidding… What have we come to if it seems unreasonnable to talk about our happiness with even our closest friends? Couldn’t people look at it with some form of hope? Couldn’t it be an example for them that there is something better than whatever hell they are going through at the moment? I know of happiness because I have learned about hell first. If anyone had told me, back then, about how happy they were… I would have felt envy, but even more so, I would have wanted a map to get there myself.

Doesn’t everyone who suffers want to get out of it? Or are we so often too absorbed by our own drama that we don’t even look out the window to see if there is a road to elsewhere? Is envy bigger than our desire to find a way? Do we have so much ego that we cannot allow ourselves to admire success? And by any means… I am NOT here referring to my happiness being linked to so-called ‘’success”. But it just seems like when people go up, for whatever reason, there will always be those who will want to bring them back down. And I wonder about what motivates all of this.

I have heard it often, but I have rarely seen it applied: friends should not envy you, they should be happy for you. Then why is it that there are dozens of ears for my problems but none for my happiness? Why do I feel that it will come back to bite me in the @ss if I talk about feeling great for just a bit too long, or with just too many people?

When I was younger, I would not allow myself to get angry. It would switch to guilt or sadness. Because somehow, I would have no right to be angry. Who was I to think I could blame anyone for anything? I managed to get rid of that self-imposed restraint. And here it is again, in another form. But I have grown, and this time, it is not self-imposed. I have acknowledged my happiness and I have allowed myself to feel it, enjoy it… endulge in it even, for it was reached through heartache. But with that new life, I have been sent clear messages on numerous occasions. DO NOT TALK ABOUT IT.

I believe that we need to increase the level of good in the world. I believe that there are so many horrible things around the globe that we must try to balance it out better… or reverse the current even! I believe in sharing happy thoughts. I believe in seeing the light at the end of the tunnel instead of the doors that we must open and the mountains that we must climb. And if there are no stories to recall how one reached a state of serenity with life… who will believe that such a thing can happen?

People… I beg you… Listen to happiness once in a while! Happy people are not people who don’t care about your challenges. But they stand proof that after you have defeated adversity, you will be rewarded. Some can, while others cannot… but trust me, they would all gladly give you instructions on how to make it happen rather than watch you suffer any longer.

Open your ears to happy stories. Open your heart to happy stories.

-I ain’t no preacher-