Casual Happiness

One of my coworkers has a laugh that makes me happy. It’s throaty and really, really loud. And she reserves it for the times that something is truly hilarious or remarkable, so when I hear it, I know something good is going on.

I heard her laugh a moment ago in the office around the corner as she gave a computer training to someone. “HA HA HA HA HA!” At first I smiled to myself, thinking about how much her laugh boosts my spirits, but then my face fell. Something tugged at me; something was wrong. I got quiet for a moment, and then I realized what was going on.

Earlier this afternoon I had taken a phone call from someone who was desperate. If you’ve ever been desperate (as opposed to “sad” or even “devastated”), you know that you can detect that feeling in the voice of another person. No matter how hard they try to sound smooth and composed, you can hear that they are barely holding themselves together. You can hear that they have almost exhausted all of their resources and that they have hardly any remaining hope. I spoke two times today to this desperate person, and although I don’t know her, I prayed for her each time after we got off the phone.

When I heard my coworker laugh, I thought about the caller with the seemingly insurmountable problems, and I remembered how bad it feels to hear laughter and gaiety when your world is crumbling. It slices through you. The contrast between other people’s casual happiness and your misery is unbearable. It’s a lonely feeling. At that moment you realize that you have nothing in common with people living normal lives, even people who think they’re unhappy. You have nothing in common with people who can complain about doing annoying tasks like picking up dry cleaning or going to the vet, people who have so little going on that they can spend several minutes thinking about the rudeness of a drugstore clerk or how much they couldn’t stand a kid that was in 5th grade with them. You feel so disconnected from the world you see going on around you that it might as well be on a movie screen.

I am radiant with gratitude right now. I am concerned for the lady I spoke with on the phone, and I almost feeling like jumping up and down because my life is better than that today, and I know it. I am living a normal life today. I can pay the bills I have today. My children are healthy today. I’m healthy today. If a cashier glares at me, I won’t be so depressed that I don’t care. I’ll be annoyed for a second. If I get an ecstatic call from a friend telling me she’s pregnant, I won’t go lie on my bed and cry. I’ll be able to tell her I’m happy and mean it. I’m in a place today where I can be bothered by things that are bothersome, where I can rejoice over events that are good and where I put off doing tasks that are unpleasant. There are appropriate reactions for everything I’m dealing with right now. There is no apathy, there is no terror, there is no mournfulness. I smile at someone else’s belly laugh; I don’t wince.

God has delivered me to normalcy. I feel like soaking up every bit of ordinary life that I can today.