Springing Forward…

Like if it starts with, “I would like to talk about how to choose the best laundry detergent.”, you would probably press “Delete” before you even check if it’s your brand.

But if it starts with, “I first discovered my penchant for decorating whilst surrounded by Western African pygmies in Cameroon while gathering exotic orchids”, I may have you at the ‘blog flap’.

Or not.

Or not.

Or maybe your readers just have an excited failure of hilarity.

And he said, “Just for a moment, I felt a little happier than I had before — as if honking the horn made me happier. If on a one-to-ten scale, I was feeling an emotional two, when I honked the horn, my happiness grew several points. In time, when I turned on to Hwy 544, I noticed that my emotional set point would begin to rise. That entire 13.4 mile stretch began to become a place of emotional rejuvenation for me.”

So the man now has got to find out who put the sign up. He finds a house on the other side of the trees that lined the highway.

He goes to the door and asks the man living there if he knows anything about the happy sign. The man at the door welcomes him in and says yes, yes, he made the sign and this is why.

Day after day he was sitting in a darkened bedroom with his terminally ill young wife, sitting there, watching her every day as she lay waiting to die. And one day when he couldn’t really take it anymore, he painted up that sign and stuck it out by the road, because he said, ‘I just wanted people in their cars not to take this moment for granted. This special, never-again-to-be-repeated moment with the ones they care for most should be savored and they should be aware of the happiness in the moment.’

At first, he said, that after he put out the sign, there was only a honk here and there. His dying wife asked what that was about and the husband explained how he’d put the sign out there. After a few days, there was more honking and then more. And then the husband said that the honking became like medicine to her.

As she lay there, she heard the horns and found great comfort in knowing that she was not isolated in a dark room dying. She was part of the happiness of the world; it was literally all around her. 

But I have found that once you are past your physical peek, of say, 26, it is an incremental dive downhill from there. Contrary to popular opinion, growing up is hard to do.

• We have to be aware of what is missing in our lives. We notice as early as children, that most of our needs are usually unmet. 
• No good story happens by eating a salad.
• If we have a bad dream, didn’t sleep well or are depressed, we think it had something to do with what we ate—especially if it was pizza. It wasn’t.
• If somebody tells us what is wrong with us or what they don’t like about us, they are probably, at least to a certain extent, corrrect. Owning up to it right away ends a lot of arguments.
• Fruits and vegetables deserve a deeper analysis. 
• Nothing can keep you young like an open mind—except maybe great sex. Heck, even mediocre sex can add a few years.
• Know that you do not have to be beautiful ’cause that’s why Demi Moore was born.
• Do not read the article – “442 Tips to Monetize your Social Media Presence in 2018”. It will make you crazy.
• There are reasons your living room sofa is holding you back.