In the rapture of now

I think happiness comes from self-acceptance. We all try different things, and we find some comfortable sense of who we are. We look at our parents and learn and grow and move on. We change. Jamie Lee Curtis

Happiness is not that elusive a butterfly when I sit still and breathe into the rapture of the moment. When I stop the constant chatter in my mind long enough to hear my heart beating in time with the moment.

Happiness is not elusive at all when I let go of my need to fill time with constant doing and fall into the grace of my being aligned with who I am in all that I am doing.

Happiness is a peaceful heart, a morning filled with birdsong and the smell of the lilac bush outside my kitchen window. Happiness is Ellie sleeping on her mat at the end of our bed, the house a peaceful hum in the early light.

Happiness is, my acceptance in the moment of my arising that this is a brand new day. A day to create anew all that I want, all that I dreamed of, all that I can achieve.

Happiness grows as I grow into the change I create in the world. The change that reflects my higher good spreading out across the circle of my influence, gently affecting the world around me with undulating ripples of love and joy, kindness and caring, smiles and laughter.

I don't need a reason to 'be' happy. I simply need the desire to choose happiness.

I believe how I experience life is based on my choices. I didn't choose to be Louise Gallagher, 5'2.5". Dark brown hair turning white. Big brown eyes with laughter lines etched deeply into the corners. I didn't choose to have the parents I have, the childhood I had, the places we lived in, the journeys we took as a family. I didn't choose any of it when I was a child -- and how I experience it today is all my choice.

The experiences I had as an adult, many of them are based on my past experiences as a child. The choices I made were predicated upon the wiring of my youth, some of it functional, some of it pretty faulty. And still, how I experience my memories of my past is all my choice.

Like the relationship with the man who lied and cheated. I have a choice in how I hold onto the pain and sorrow, the tears and fears. I can let them keep me stuck solid in a fearful place where I hold myself under the silent waters of grief. Reflections of a woman's heart held fast to the chilling memories of time past. Or, I can let them flow freely in the river of forgiveness and set myself free to fall, as my daughter Alexis describes it, into the pool of love that awaits me at the end of the waterfall.

Water doesn't flow backwards.

Neither does time.

Yet, I can choose to hold myself under the thrall of time past by not letting go of what I had to make room for more of what I want in my life today.

It is always my choice.

This morning, I awaken to my choices. My choice how I greet the morning. I choose a loving heart filled with gratitude and a rising spirit of joy.

With my attitude of happiness settled softly in my heart, I move forward in my day anticipating all of this and everything better.

It is my choice.

The question is: What is your choice? To fill your mind with stories of how the world has robbed you of happiness, of your birthright of magnificence? Or, to fill your spirit with the joy and gratitude of being rapturously alive in this moment unfolding in all its limitless possibilities. Your choice. What will it be?