Dear Everyone - Happiness Only Exists Because Of Sadness

In my last letter I said that I was starting Day 1 on my road to happiness. Somehow I got stuck at Day 1 and didn't get to Day 2 for a long time. And when I got to Day 2 I didn't realise I'd got there until I was looking back and was able to say 'Oh yeah things have got better.' So have I found happiness on Day 2? Maybe. Nothing has really got better - not in a practical sense. I am still struggling to pay my bills. I am still 57. I am still invisible when I go out unless my uber cute 19 year old daughter is with me and then some of the shine on her settles on me just because I am standing within her shine zone. My body is still ravaged by cancer and makes me cry and I still pester my gorgeous doctor Gavin with irrational fears of cancer in my left little toe nail. I still feel crap almost every day from the affects of the treatment. There are still crap drivers on the road that make me use language I tell my kids off for using. Alcohol still makes me fat. Avocados, chocolate, bubble tea and cheesecake still make me fat. In fact anything I really like to eat makes me fat. But we look for Happiness in all the wrong places. Because Happiness is not to be looked for. Happiness is not to be found - it's to be made. And it can't be made for an entire life time. Happiness is only happiness in contrast to Sadness. Otherwise it's nothing. Happiness, (and its only taken me 50 years to realise this) is made of moments, some are fleeting moments, some last the length of a holiday. It is still moments of happiness that fill a life. The rest of the time we rail and struggle against whatever life sends us just trying to survive and trying to find one or two other people who will bare themselves to us so they can stand beside us as we rail and struggle together. And then the moments of happiness remind us that life is not just struggle and railing and swearing but it is something else, something we can't put our finger on that we call spiritual or meaningful or .....happiness. I have realised that for me my true happiness comes from the moments of connection and sharing life and food and celebrations that I have with those I love, my kids, my husband and my friends or even people I don't know who drop a line to say they are standing beside me. And no matter what shit happens to me - those moments keep happening. So I do have happiness.