Friday, September 21, 2012

A Reason To Be Happy


He's the happy-go-lucky, white beagle everyone loves that has a nose-in-the-air dance that is joy, personified. He exudes positive energy, no matter what the situation and never gets hung up on a negative thought for more than a single cartoon frame. He gives no explanation for his happiness and needs no reason to always live on the greener side of life's fence. 

He is happiness.

He is Snoopy. 

I find that simple things have great potential for life impact due to their vastly open capacity for interpretation. Enter, Snoopy, the cartoon dog from the Peanuts Gang.  

Funny how a simple black and white cartoon character from the 1950's that speaks no words can be an influential figure to 24 year old me, today. It's hard not to smile when you think of his trademark happy dance complete with piano tune in the background. 

Everyone, today, is busy. Everyone is stressed. Everyone has an endless to-do list and no one has enough time to do it all. 

We have become accustomed to being tired and frazzled. Antidepressants and self-medicating tactics are turned to far more often that they should be. We numb out the pain and demands of life and have no energy left to be happy. 

We don't smile and dance nearly as much as we should.

Perhaps, it may not always be appropriate to break out in a full out dance, but even when life is the crappiest of crap, we have the ability to break a smile across our faces. 

Life only puts things in our path that we are capable of handling. Sometimes these things seem so monumentally impossible to deal with, smiling and laughing about it initially is the only way to take the first stab at it. It takes the edge off. Try it.

But, how could we smile? There are bills to pay, places to be, deadlines to meet... What is there to be happy about? 

Snoopy needs no reason to be happy. Why do we?

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