Two years ago I remember sitting in a dusty corner of a garden in Guatemala, watching a family hanging laundry to dry. Like everyone in the village of San Juan la Laguna, the family didn’t have much. But watching them, playing and working together, enjoying every moment of what they had together… it did something to me. I had been feeling sorry for myself. I had been wondering what I was doing in Guatemala and if it was simply a way to hold off making any important decisions about my life through which I seemed to be wandering aimlessly. Watching that family enjoy a simple activity like hanging laundry, one would think they were on vacation in the French Riviera. I could easily venture to say, they were happy.
One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn is the various forms “happiness” can take in life. In one moment, for one person, it can be an achievement years in the making. For another, it can be the birth of a child. For me, I want more than anything to find the joy in every moment. This morning I was watching some of my documentary footage from Dia de los Muertos in Guatemala. In the footage, my good friend Samuel Lazo Bautista says, “Death is but an arms length behind me at any given moment. I’m like a monkey in a tree. I don’t care what is an arm’s length behind me, I just keep going. Every moment is beautiful.”
As Mardi Horowitz joins us this week on A Closer Look to discuss his book A Course In Happiness, I look forward learning how I might put the pieces of my life together and look at the whole… rather than the segmented moments of what I thought happiness should be.
Until next time,
Nicholas Beatty
