Bliss & Rainbows
When was the last time you felt bliss? Bliss that left you so full of happiness you felt as if your soul were opening to splash a rainbow of joy across the sky. As corny as that sounds, you know that feeling I’m talking about - that uncontainable happiness we all seek.
If you’ve been following this blog you know I recently rediscovered bliss. I proclaimed my happiness from mountaintops and shouted my joy at the top of my lungs. I made every effort to pick up others around me and carry them off in my joyful rapture. I stopped to savor as many moments as I could fearing it would end. And, inevitably, it did.
At first I was confused and felt I had failed - failed at being happy… as if. I worried that my joy wasn’t the result of a life-changing transformation as I had thought - that maybe I had confused lasting joy with a temporary high coming off an incredibly low period in my life. I was stuck - confused. So I waited. I hoped something would change, that something good would happen, or someone would come along and deliver bliss.
Then one day while running errands it hit me. I had not lost joy - what I was missing was gratitude. And right there - driving down the interstate toward the grocery store - I felt tears pooling in the corners of my eyes. The tears came because I realized how much I had to be thankful for and how carelessly those things had been ignored. I paused and created a mental list of the many blessings in my life. I immediately began to feel the tingle of bliss again. But it wasn’t because happiness came out of hiding, or because things finally changed, or because someone delivered bliss.
It was because my bliss was there all along. Bliss lives in the recognition of blessings - it thrives when you allow yourself to stand in the moment and accept it as it is [good or bad, painful or a delight, crushing or uplifting] and realize that you are in control of the happiness you feel and the joy you project to the world around you.
Things in life will never be perfect - happiness comes between moments of pain, joy follows sadness, and bliss floats above your head unnoticed. But those things that happen - those things are not where you find joy… YOU are the joy that creates the happiness in your life. Even in the darkest of times, happiness is still within you and available to you.
You deserve to be happy. You deserve to feel the bliss that makes rainbows burst from your soul, splashing bright, beautiful color on everyone and everything around you. The beautiful Marilyn Monroe said,
“Happiness does not come to you, it comes from you.”
And that is the thought I need to be reminded of today and what I want to share with you. Because there is nothing that stands in the way of the happiness you deserve except yourself. Stop waiting for things to change. Stop expecting someone to come along and make you happy. Surround yourself with gratitude and embrace your bliss right now.
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