Woman's Search for Happiness

This morning, I had one of those moments.  You know, those moments.  I had sandwiched the night between the couch downstairs and the floor next to my little boy's mattress.  (so I wouldn't wake anyone up with my hacking cough)  There was a graveyard of fluffy used tissues in a half-circle next to the sofa.  Toys were scattered pell-mell across the living room floor, dishes filled my sink, piles of papers threatened to spill over their stacks all across the kitchen counter.  In my flu-induced stupor, I was trying to get bleary kids ready for a late day.  There was one on the computer playing chess in his pajamas, one half-ready in her summer shorts in the kitchen, another dragging, dragging, downstairs in her bright pink nightgown, wondering why. I. have. to. go. to school.  every. day.  Another little girl wonders where I was last night and why I didn't return to lay with her a second time.  Then I remembered I had a meeting this morning, ug.  With my nose still plugged with all manner of.  And some errands to run and this house.  Oh, this house.  It was clean a week ago, and today it looks like the 7th circle of &*%#.  There are two current construction zones and an emergency management zone, plus, I've been sick all week!  So I'm kind of behind.  Oh yeah, and we're going on a date with some friends tonight.  What am I going to wear?  Nothing fits, seeing as I weigh as much as I did when I had my babies.  Ouch. (my darned knees are injured so I can't exercise, which is killing me!)  And what if they want to come over afterward?  Great spotless trendy cute perfect people.  They are going to think we are the keepers of the dump.  I'm imagining my embarrassment.  Oh yeah, and some paperwork due at school today, the very last day.  Is it buried under one of the many Pisa-like piles?

I've been a little distracted lately.  And a little down about some general life challenges.  If you ever think my life is breezy, well, I definitely struggle with some things.  Some things that weigh really heavy some days. 

So...on this particular day, when all of the tornado was coming to pass, as I tried to whip through the chaos and ready some little people, I had a little moment of ....well, you'll see.

We were standing in the corner of the kitchen.  My four year-old was looking up at me and demonstrating with her hands in a very emphatic way about how she wanted me to just "scoop" her eggs into her mouth.  My son was waxing on about parallelograms.  They were both oblivious that the other was having a completely independent conversation with me at the same time. 

Then my nine year-old started to speculate about a person named "Ima," and what if her last name was "Buttchip."  And what if Ima Buttchip went to Hogwarts and Professor Flitwick, in calling her name, said "I'm a Buttchip."  And then she proceeded to go through an extensive individual list of the staff at Hogwarts, imagining each calling themselves (basically), a Buttchip.  So I got to hear this over and over and over.  I'm a Buttchip.  I'm a Buttchip.  I'm a Buttchip. 

And pretty soon, we're late for school, again.....and I'm rounding up a couple of things and my seven year old has a meltdown.  She is wailing and sucking in air, and looking around with truly distressed blue-green eyes with tears dripping out of them and a sideways distressed mouth that compresses her lips and reveals her crooked growing-in teeth and saying that her sister called her a... Buttchip.  To which a distant voice calls from a distant room that she was not calling her a Buttchip, "she just didn't understand I was making a joke"...la la la.  Kind of funnier because we don't even really say the word "butt" at our house.

And I had this weird crazy happy feeling.  Crazy because I felt feeling fill my whole chest cavity as it dawned on me that....I love this.  I love these little people that make me crazy happy.  I love that in all of this chaos that feels so out of control some days, that I get to listen to after school stories, comfort end-of-the-world knee scrapes, tie shoes, help with school projects, tuck-in-bedders and shoo out-of-bedders; even  that I get to muffle a laugh-cry as I try to mold my face into pious sympathy while my daughter wails about being called a "buttchip."

And even in middle of the wailing, I looked at that little girl that I was so nervous I might lose last month and saw a whole package of a person I love so much.  Five little unique people, really, that I love individually, who make life so rich and fun and interesting and purposeful.

And I remembered a quote I read from Victor Frankl, the gist of which was "don't search for happiness, search for meaning."  And that is one of the reasons my heart was so full, because I saw how much meaning there was in all of it.  A lot of little people and a lot of meaning.  And when life seems a bit hard to take some days, they are the reason I hold on.  My reason to be better, to hang on, to give them a happy life.  And that is what makes me happy, not the chasing of happiness, but that moment when it finds me and settles on me in the most unexpected places.

When I searched for the exact quote, I couldn't find it.  But I did find out that Victor Frankl was a survivor of the Nazi death camps. 

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”
― Viktor E. Frankl

“Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.”
― Viktor E. Frankl

(Quotes taken from Goodreads)

Don't search for happiness, search for meaning.  For me, meaning comes from trying each day to make someone's life better.  That makes me happy.  Even if it involves Buttchips.

In the midst of all the lateness and craziness this morning, I couldn't resist snapping a few pictures of this sweet little boy who stole in a snuggle with me this morning and fell asleep.  Isn't baby sleeping just magical?  So glad I get a first-row seat with this sweet view.

What gives your life meaning?  Do you have a hero that has inspired you?