it's not the fall that will get you....

It's the sudden stop at the bottom. How did life ever get so damn complicated? Why does it seem that in order to be happy, someone else will have to be unhappy? Are my expectations so far away from realistic as to be considered impossible? Should I even try to be happy? Do I even deserve to be happy more than not? I understand that no one is happy all of the time. I know that everyone has at least some neutral times. I guess I just go so very very long between times when I can honestly say I am happy and content that it is really dragging me down even lower.

As physicists search...

for the elusive Higgs Boson particle (or what ever the heck that little barnacle is called) I have a new challenge for them. I would love to see the mightiest minds on earth turned to finding the most elusive, slippery and cagey thing every rumored to roam the face of the planet. The supremely wily and ephemeral creation that has ever graced the Almighty's blessed beautiful creation is probably the most sought after prize ever known to man. Lives have been lost in the search, marriages destroyed, regimes toppled, nations erased and even the odd balloon has been sacrificed on the alter of pursuit to this icon. The strangest behavior of note is the fact that it is found in abundance where it is least pursued. Almost as if the very search for it causes it to evaporate. It has been fashioned out of nothing, thus defying most logic on how it functions.

Many take for granted that it can even be found. Some feel that they have inherited some right to possess it with no efforts to obtain it. Should they find that it has eluded them they do not try to find it but find fault with those around them who did not retain it in holding for their use. Others have learned or were fortunate enough to know that the search for it is available to all but that no one is granted privilege or preference over others to it's possession.

For myself, I find it to be as a water balloon that has been coated in cooking oil. If I am gentle and careful I can keep it for some time. If I am too excited or try to hold tightly to that which I already have, it escapes and is lost. I try to slow down and find it in the small places it hides. I try to lift it gently and tenderly hold it and nurture it, some days with more success than others. I hope my children learn from my efforts. Perhaps they will be more prosperous in their efforts. To those of you with the gilded lives which bestow upon you many returns in your collective efforts, I hope you remember to share it with those around you. For the best way to find Happiness is to share it with others when you do find it. Then you will be a source for Happiness for them. In this way it can spread though out our families, friends, communities and, dare I say, even the world.

What if Atlas shrugged...

and the world broke in two? What if the crack that destroyed the world didn't originate in the world but sprang from a crack within Atlas himself? The same crack that caused him to shrug in the first place, what if that same crack destroyed his world. How would he live with himself after the pieces were gathered together and shoved back together? How could he even think of going on? Of trying again to shoulder the world? Would the weight of tragedy, the devastation utterly reduce him beyond restitution and leave him as naught? Less than the dust of the earth upon which he trod. Can there be any hope for help? Is there a way to repair or fill the fault within before it destroys the world? Is there anyone who can help?