Transitions, Part 2

Last weekend, a friend of mine asked her husband for a divorce.

“I’m 40 years old,” she told me. “I deserve to be happy.”

Luckily, she spared me most of the details of the impending breakup. Admittedly, unlike much of the human race — and to my detriment, perhaps, as a journalist — I truly, totally do not give a fuck about knowing all that much about most people.

Knowing people is a delicate balance, I have found. Yes, I am curious about what makes certain people tick; people I have gotten close to/with, I have obviously managed to dig deeper, usually not so much because they required it of me (or I of them), but because there was a mutual desire to know each other, on various levels, testing several stages until we found just the right comfort zone for our relationship.

With anyone, though, there is that point known as TMI: Too Much Information.

Cross that line and you have tipped the balance. Usually, I have found, it is better to stay on this side of the TMI threshhold (Is that right? Are their 2 h’s in “threshhold”?) rather than to give out too much of anything, too soon.

Or, in some cases, ever.

Which is not to say that sometimes, especially when it comes to the topic of sex, that I don’t want to find out some juicy secret from my pals.

(Hey, I only said I might be different from much of the human race; I never said I wasn’t a part of it!)

: )

Anyhoo, I listened to my friend ramble a bit, and then I did kind of a double-take.

“Listen,” I said. “First of all, there is no age limit on happiness. Everyone is entitled to be happy, at any age.”

Even the U.S. Constitution backs me up on that one! OK, so it doesn’t say you have the right to be happy, but it sure guarantees you the right to pursue happiness. (Not sure this has any bearing on whether you can pursue happiness whilst traveling abroad, though; maybe I will take up that subject at another time.)

“And not only that,” I continued: “No one is obligated to make you happy. No one owes that to you; happiness comes from somewhere inside you.”

I paused for effect. I was on a definite soapbox now.

“There are people out there, though, who can only bring you down. Their negativity brings you down to their level,” I said. “In fact, there are people out there who are not happy until they make someone else unhappy.”

(Actually, I didn’t come up with that last sentence until a few hours later, when I was discussing the matter with The Lovely. I’m pretty sure she was happily napping away at that time as I drove us down to the mall.)

: )

From the talented Joni Mitchell:

Bows and flows of angel hair
and ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I’ve looked at clouds that way.
But now they only block the sun,
they rain and snow on everyone.
So many things I would have done,
but clouds got in my way.

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall.
I really don’t know clouds at all.