Locating joy and sadness is a funny thing. When I am smack dab in the middle of it – I don’t think about my coordinates. Here’s a novel ideal, but maybe it’s when I don’t actually think about it, that it is when I am happy. When I am having fun, I am laughing, I am asking questions, I am listening to others, I am making double entendres, I am recalling memories, hearing the narrative of others. I am just being me and me isn’t about time and space, it is about relaxing and being in that moment or this moment or wherever that moment happens to be. Sometimes it is static, other times, well, it’s hard to put my finger on it, but I know it’s there; here.

Emotions are complex and when they interact with part of my brain they have been known to start some unnecessarily heavy conversations.  It’s as if my emotions, and my hopes are looking for something, it’s as if they need to see the sign on the street that says “Centre of Happiness” or “Downtown Unhappiness”.

I know this by now, but I forgot, it’s when you look for something that you often don’t find it. No place like home makes for a great side dish and it spreads very nicely.

Honestly, I am beginning to think that a lot of the work that goes on in my brain isn’t pretty efficient. If I am looking for happiness, quite often my mind gets preoccupied with the empty coffee cups on the street, the pieces garbage on the sidewalk. Could it be when you expect positivity, then your mind sees the mess. I am concerned that I am going to be frequently experiencing negative emotions because they are not what I want, but my brain has full permission to explore them and the brain is pretty good and finding them, creating them.

There is North and there is Magnetic North and I think all of us may have something similar inside. There’s the truth and there’s the truth we live in.

The truth is there is neither.

By creating expectations of joy, I also create a roadmap for depression, pessimism, rejection and anxiety.

I am not too sure how this will happen, other than by practice, but I think it might be good for me to realize that I live in a good neighbourhood and by looking for things that aren’t in my vicinity, I am creating an upscale district that I don’t need to be in.

Each of us has the capacity tio shift our moods, make choices, take on change and each of us can choose where we frame our mind.  A little to the lift, no, centred perhaps, maybe that’s a bit too high. What about the lighting, how it changes.

Everything is fine where it is.

I am good where I am, I spend a bit too much time trying to figure things out, but I am in a good place, my place on this earth and on this land, I will continue to cultivate empathy and compassion.