“Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.” - Mother Teresa
When we’re laughing or smiling, others may take that to mean we must be happy about something; when we look serious, others may assume we aren’t happy. But appearances can be deceiving, we sometimes cry at weddings as well as funerals, times when we arrive as well as when we depart. What is there about certain moments that makes us happy, regardless of whether our faces are wet with tears or beaming from ear to ear or both?
It seems to me that we are happy when we have a healthy sense of being connected, whether to nature, another person, a group of people, our inner selves, our work or play. When a person who was on a high school or college team looks back on those years, he or she may do so with longing for a time one can’t go back to. Even if the team lost more often than they won, the memory of being connected to a group of people trying to attain a common goal together can be powerful enough years or even decades later to evoke both laughter and tears at reunions.
Whenever I write something, whether it’s a short story, poem, letter, or a post on Facebook, I often feel happiness because I have connected with other people. Even if only a few people, or even no one at all, read my words, I still experience happiness from what I write because I have consciously connected with emotions and thoughts that I was not entirely aware of before I wrote them down. Mother Teresa speaks about how our efforts to connect with others can sometimes end up in disappointment because, despite really trying, our efforts are not returned. After all, we can’t connect with others if they’re not willing to connect with us.
Mother Teresa tells us not to be concerned when our attempts with others fail, because even when they do, any effort we make to connect with other human beings, will actually, at the same time, be a connection with the ultimate relationship we refer to as God.
David James Madden