Living Happiness

Good Easter Monday morning everyone. Today we will be talking about zombies. What? What’s that you say? Well … okay … maybe not so much zombies but I did get your attention, didn’t I?

It’s Easter Monday morning for everyone on the Catholic/Western calendar, which means for a lot of the people reading this blog = you. Many of you were probably out yesterday hiding Easter eggs that will never be found until they start rotting under a bush, traveling to Meemaw and Pop-pop’s house for ham and strawberry cake and any other food that can possibly be made with Jell-O, and probably going to church at some point with all the other people wearing dazed expressions and trying to remember all five million verses to “Up From the Grave He Arose.”

Yes, this past weekend was all about celebrating both resurrection and rebirth. The arrival of Spring. The hope in our hearts that just because things die, this doesn’t mean the end. YAY for this comfort! But, hey, wait a minute … what if some things really are just better off dead?

Don’t get me wrong. I am a big fan of Easter. This is just the start of Holy Week here in Greece, and I am already gearing up to dye a ton of eggs a really dark red, make tsoureki, and go walk under Christ’s tomb on Friday night while Judas burns in a corner (more on that later … maybe). Yes, I truly love Easter. My heart swells all week long. I cry when Jesus dies. I mourn all day Saturday. And then when the Holy Light is passed around on Saturday evening and the church becomes filled with radiance and the midnight hour strikes and the bells begin pealing madly, my heart feels like it’s too big for my chest — it’s just going to pop out!

But, really, aren’t there just some things we don’t want to see resurrected? I can think of a few: leisure suits, calling men “Daddy-O,” parachute pants, spiral perms, Doc Martens and flannels, the Macarena. And there are some other things, too: bad jobs, bad relationships, our old selves (before therapy). Isn’t it better that at least some things be left alone? Maybe dead is the best state for them.

The reason I say this is because I’m remarkably good at letting things live on well past their sell-by date (yick) and at also trying to revive things that really just don’t need to be revived (and ending up with zombies. See? I told you there’d be zombies here). I’m the consummate optimist thinking, “Maybe things aren’t as bad as I thought they were/are?” Sometimes I am proved wrong, but there are more times that I am not.

Over the years I have had to learn when to let go of things, when to let things die. It is never easy for me. I want to believe that things will get better, heal, have miraculous recoveries, be resurrected and not stink when they rise from the tomb (I totally understand Mary & Martha’s concern on this one in the great Lazarus incident) but the truth is, this is not always the case. And I have learned to accept that this doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

The letting go is a bit hard. Losses of bad jobs and bad relationships, while almost always better for me in the long run, still leave me grieving. So I let myself have mini-funerals of the emotional nature. But then, after the grieving’s over, I move on.

What I then experience is not so much rebirth or resurrection as an opening out of my life. There’s now room in it for new things to come in. It’s a remarkable feeling when I realize this, and freeing, too. And I begin to anticipate what good thing will come in to take its place. Good things usually do … at least, if that’s what I’m expecting (see my notes on the Laws of Attraction).

So, on this Easter Weekend just passed, I thought less about resurrection and more about burial. It’s okay to let things end. And perhaps that idea doesn’t run as counter to Easter as one might be led to believe. Maybe, just maybe, when we allow these deaths (in all their finality) to happen in our lives, what we’re really allowing to be resurrected is ourselves. Maybe the more important rebirth is not of these things but of the hopes and dreams and desires that we let perish while weighted down with these other concerns. Maybe …

So, on this Easter Monday, may you be blessed enough to know when to let things go. There’s a time for everything. Even death.

Good week to all of you.

It’s Saturday morning in Greece, “Easter” Saturday morning for most of the rest of the world, but we are a week behind here and Holy Week has yet to begin.

Because my last entry was about a rather negative emotion, I have wanted to write something here that brings the focus around to something positive again, but I find myself wordless the last few days, unable to put flesh on the bones of what’s rattling around in both my mind and heart.

Perhaps Easter Sunday will effect that quickening for me and, as in Ezekiel’s Valley of Bones, these dried remnants will waken, rise up and walk.

For now, I wish all of you a happy Easter weekend.