Eddie Murphy's stand-up act, Raw, in the 1980's came at a time in my life when I was an adolescent looking for direction and my own identity. At one point in his act, Eddie imitates his drunk relative who, inevitably at one point at every family gathering, drunkenly shouts out "This is my house, Gus! It is my house!" Today, when my prepubescent nine-year-old acts out, I find myself sounding a bit like Eddie. "This is my house, Missy!"
Years later, I still feel as though I am searching for that same identity. As an adult, the process might look different. We look towards our partners, our careers, our life's work as our legacy. It suddenly becomes important to mold that which we will leave behind. Perhaps it is my pending fortieth birthday that has made me so ponderous. I feel a seismic shift in the way in which I relate to things.
Thanks to Abby Seixas, author of Finding the Deep River Within, which helps people through this process to find balance and joy in a teetering world, I read this poem today by May Sarton "The Work of Happiness". Thank you Abby, and May, for your wisdom on this bleak Wednesday morning!
"The Work of Happiness"
by May Sarton
I thought of happiness, how it is woven
Out of the silence in the empty house each day
And how it is not sudden and it is not given
But is creation itself like the growth of a tree.
No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark
Another circle is growing in the expanding ring.
No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark,
But the tree is lifted by this inward work
And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.
So happiness is woven out of the peace of hours
And strikes its roots deep in the house alone:
The old chest in the corner, cool waxed floors,
White curtains softly and continually blown
As the free air moves quietly about the room;
A shelf of books, a table, and the white-washed wall--
These are the dear familiar gods of home,
And here the work of faith can best be done,
The growing tree is green and musical.
For what is happiness but growth in peace,
The timeless sense of time when furniture
has stood a life's span in a single place,
And as the air moves, so the old dreams stir
The shining leaves of present happiness?
No one has heard thought or listened to a mind,
But where people have lived in inwardness
The air is charged with blessing and does bless;
Windows look out on mountains and the walls are kind.
