To be happy...

I signed up for this year, expecting full well that I would be teaching adults, and I am.

There are, however, several children that come in and out of my life at the Welcome Center, and one in particular, of late.

Manny is five, and he only started Kindergarten on Wednesday, so he's made quite a few appearances at the Welcome Center.  Last week, Sr. Pat and I took Manny to the library, and as we picked him up, he told us that the woman who had been watching Manny and her own son, "They made me angry!"

"Why?" we both inquired.

"Because they made me angry."  Five year old logic, of course.  We told Manny that he was too young to be that angry, and he said, "Okay," in this blind acceptance and gleeful sort of stupor.  He always says "okay" that way.  It sounds like sedated joy, and it makes me laugh every time.

"Why are you laughing at me?"  Manny demanded.

"I'm not laughing at you," I assure him.  "I'm laughing because I want you to laugh, too!"

And it's true.  I want him to be happy.  I said to him, "I want you to be happy all the time," and then I retracted the last bit by saying, "well, most of it."

If we're happy all the time, then we are blind to the realities around us.

If we are constantly satisfied, then we fail to realize the value of the things we have.

If we never have to wait for anything, we can't appreciate the time that has been spent so that we don't have to wait.

It's a constant tightrope dance for me.  I want to have a true picture of reality, and the truer it becomes, the heavier it becomes.  I've heard myself say, over and over, "I want you to tell me, I can handle it."  I have also been on the side that thinks that love is to protect the ones you care about by shading their reality for them.

When I was on my silent retreat in August, Fr. Ned told us that, in this world, there was always suffering, but the difference was that, in Christianity, we are invited to embrace that suffering.  I haven't come to a conclusion about how I feel as far as whether or not God "ordains" the painful pieces of our lives, but I know this: without the cross, there is no redemption.  Without something having gone awry, there is nothing to straighten out.

But Manny's only five.

He's still learning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfMEmSjkukQ