Sometimes in life you have your ups, and a lot of times you have your downs. Depression can be a very painful thing, and it affects your entire body, mindframe and attitude. We all search the Earth for what makes us happy and strive through thick and thin to find it, claim it, and keep it forever. This could be a material object, for some it’s money or wealth, and for others it’s that one special person you choose to spend your life with.
This month’s quote is dedicated to my Mom as I know that this will be a very tough month for her. The love of her life, who meant everything to her, passed away last April and I personally have been dreading this month all year as well. It’s a very painful experience when someone close to you dies, but it’s even harder to handle when that person was the one you spent every free moment of your life with – It’s almost like you die with them. Or in some cases, you wish you did. The pain and suffering can be overwhelming and it makes every morning more difficult to get out of bed and try to enjoy life. But as hard as it may seem, the best thing to do is to search for something that can bring you happiness like you once knew it.
Everyone goes through depression. Everyone feels pain. And everyone deserves to be happy.
But how do you overcome the pain, how do you find happiness and where do you even start to search for it? For some reason I think of the movie Happy Gilmore where Adam Sandler gets so frustrated all the time and Chubbs keeps saying, “Picture yourself in your Happy Place…” We all have a Happy Place that is just for us, a place that could be real, or could be imaginary, but it’s a place that makes you smile, makes you laugh, and brings back the memories of all those happy times in your life. Emotions go up and down constantly and we all need a place to go that allows us to escape reality and just enjoy what we have. And as painful as some things can be, we have to remember the good times that brought us to that point before the pain. I loved my Dad so much and it makes me cry every time I look at his pictures, but I take those tears and wipe them away and think of how blessed I really was to have him there for as long as I did. That makes me happy. And instead of dwelling on the fact that he’s gone, I reminisce about the happiness he brought me, the things he taught me, and the good times we had together. The month of April will always be a month of mourning in our family, and we will all be hurting inside, but we’ve got to go looking for our happiness and stay positive.
This month I quote a rare song by Bob Marley from his early ska days called I’m Hurting Inside –
“When I was just a little child, Happiness was there a while, and from me it slipped one day, Happiness come back I say; And if you don’t come, I’m gonna go looking, for Happiness, If you don’t come I’ve got to go looking, for Happiness”
I’ve said it many times, Bob Marley was a genius. A lot of people just think he was some crazy Rastaman that just cared about getting high and singing songs, but he was so much more than that. He was a Malcolm X, he was a JFK, he was a Martin Luther King and he believed in Freedom for everyone. He was a humungous leader who preached his beliefs through songs and had more motive than most people to stand up for his beliefs and take action against the social demons who ruled the world and he fought a lot of battles for everyone that most people would have been afraid to even speak about in those times. They tried to assassinate him but he survived, and then he sang about it. And if there was one thing Bob was good at it was finding happiness and sharing it with the world.
So whenever I hear this song I think about how everyone goes through those bad times where they just feel like shit and don’t want anything to do with anyone. But the song is not about what made him unhappy, it’s about how to get rid of that feeling and become happy again. The rhythm is upbeat and makes you want to stand up and start moving around.
Listen to the song and understand it, and think of all the things in your life that always made you smile and then go find those things again….
Love to my Dad
Ray Faux
September 18, 1947 – April 29, 2012