Happy clouds

I have lost track of how many times I get asked, “Living as you do, where you do, are you happy?”

The inference is that by living alone on 100 acres of land in a, sometimes, harsh environment, and by living away from the city lights of cafes, theatres, pubs and daily social interaction, I have brought upon myself an existence where aloneness, being such a constant companion, pushes away any possibility for true happiness. I might be a man of the trees, but can I be a smiling man of the trees? The implication is “no, you cannot”.

Friends and visitors mean well when they ask such a question, because they would want for me what even I would wish for them. However, I have no real answer to their question other than to say, “Is the rainbow but one colour?

Although important, happiness is a secondary consideration to how I am living my life.

Read the following poem by Mary Oliver and then consider whether it is worth asking her if she is happy or not:

Lead

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one
of nothing we could see.
A friend told
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the strong, elegant beak
and cried out
in the long, sweet, savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon—speckled,
irredescent, with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake —
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart —
by which I mean only
that it breaks open, and never closes again,
to the rest of the world.

Mary Oliver