HAPPINESS

Our daughter Carol arrives and is greeted by Stephen our oldest grandson.

It was good to be able to capture her lovely smile. She is wearing the dress originally picked out for me. I am wearing a dress Sandra had bought on one of her many trips to Thrift Shops in search of clothes from the sixties.

It was a fun idea to have us all dress up and it seems to loosen people up too. Plans and ideas where being went back and forth on face book months before the happy day. It always gives me great joy to see my family happy even when they express it in different ways.

Each one of us is a chapter in a story that is being written and a continuation of the story of our parents and grandparents etc. We are evolutionary transformations as we are a unique combination of the genetic endowment of our parents.

History would have us believe that all of humanity lived in Africa until some 60,000 years ago. By some great miracle the world became populated and genetic diversity took place.

We leave home because we want to be different and maybe better than our parents. We have ideals and dreams for our own lives. We discover that life is not so easy that we are vulnerable to making wrong choices and to reacting badly.

We are all strangers in a strange land and no matter how the anthropologists search for clues to make one race superior there is good and bad in all cultures. Religion was a club to tame the savage that was different from ourselves. Honestly we did not need it as an excuse to ravage and pillage the weak as it seems to be a very firm part of human nature.

Listening to Tapestry on C.B.C. I was again struck by the reality that facing our own pain even while trying to carry the pain of others has the potential to make us more compassionate and sensitive to others.

Today has been a very different day than last Sunday when the world was full of laughter and colour and excitement. Today is rainy and cold and I must admit I feel a little depressed and not able to settle on anything. There is absolutely nothing I feel like doing. Am I wasting the day? To-morrow will be different as out of the laziness I will choose to make it different but for now I am content just to be in the slow lane.