Happiness

Happiness is having a purpose in life, I've decided.

A grand purpose would be nice, but I don't seem to have cultivated that. My life is probably always going to be a hundred little purposes and the danger there is not believing they are worthwhile. Being a mother was the grandest one I've ever been and, having done a pretty good job at it, I've pretty much worked myself right out of a need for that now. My kids love me, but they don't need me to take care of them anymore.

I try to be kind to the random people who want to chat on Instagram and it's amazing how many there are. Sometimes I feel like a sage and sometimes I just feel old and out of touch. The conversations can be fun and stimulating though. The hardest part often being that when they discover my age, they have a difficult time letting go of their idea of a stereotyped woman in her seventies. They are thinking old, fragile, white haired, sweet and docilely boring. I need to negate those ideas immediately!

I'm not cute. I'm not fourteen and wanting to take hip hop classes. My intellect has not gone back to my childhood, but a part of me never left either. I'm pretty much the same woman I was in my fifties and sixties.  I think we under estimate how long it takes a human being to mature. I'm not sure we're really ready to be picked for fifty years or so.

I think I can be happy as long as I make the world better in some small way for at least one human being every day. That doesn't seem unrealistic in this world where I run into people walking, shopping, on the Internet, and socializing. I just need to remember that when I flash a genuine smile at someone and they give me a genuine smile back -- that's a very good thing.