Choose to be Happy

I was in a terrible car accident years ago. A seemingly normal day. I was on my way to work. Only 22 years old, cruising 80mph down the freeway when I heard my phone buzz from the passenger seat. Maybe it was human reflex or force of habit that pulled my eyes away the road. I turned my gaze toward the cell phone hum against the leather seat. Only a blink. A moment. When I looked up, a semi-trailer was at a dead stop not 10 feet ahead. Time stopped. Calm came over me as I watched the front end of my car folding against the trailer, my inevitable demise, in slow motion. My higher conscious spoke, “I’m ready. I’m ready to go home.” Overcome with peace and trust I lifted my foot off the break...

I think I died. Or I was dying. At the cusp of mortality I touched Nirvana. Perfect awareness, divine understanding, perfect nothingness, complete consciousness. No words can describe. Briefly was I cradled in the rapture of oneness, the warm blanket of home I never had, then violently I was cast back out into the hell of life.

With a sharp, rubber-band snap I was forced back into the flesh. Born again in brutal, writhing agony, under spiritual assault.

“Why am I alive?” The question on infinite repeat in my mind. I felt betrayed. My anger, growing resentment. I was broken and abandoned. I remember screaming. I couldn’t speak. Trapped in the seat. The engine burning holes in my denim jeans. Howling despair, my entire body being crushed by human disposition. Gasping for breath, choking on smoke, blinded by debris.

The plastic console betwen the seats had split in half and I’d been staked at the wrist, all the way through the top of my hand. I painstakingly plucked my arm from it’s impalement. Through the pinched opening that used to be my driver‘s window I pulled myself from the wreckage through shattered glass.

Such sudden entrapment was a prison sentence. I knew then the affliction of mankind. For the first time, I felt the true weight of my body. Surrender. I collapsed on the asphalt and let the rain pour down over my beaten figure. I prayed for death, “Take me back home. Please, let me go home.”

10 years later...

We’re inclined to stow away our hurt, swallow our worry, succumb to fear and insecurity. On our backs we carry the boulders of inclination, doubt, ugliness, pain; as big as planets and just as heavy.

I was driving my 5-year-old home from school. The rain poured down heavy on the windshield.

My daughter is developmentally delayed. I try to carry her burden as well but I can’t protect her from everything. Children can be cruel.

She seemed out of sorts that day. I asked her, “Do you feel alright, baby girl? Do the other children treat you differently?”

She replied, “Sometimes. I don’t like it when they take me from the classroom for special lessons.”

Before I could respond, she told me, “It’s okay, mommy. I choose to be happy.”

What she told me that day altered my perception forever. “I choose to be happy.” Choose to be happy? So simple, so profound.

“You’re absolutely right. Choose to be happy, because you deserve it.”

At some point you must realize that YOU are the only person who can put down that weight you carry and move forward . “Living” is an everyday practice in self-awareness, patience, understanding, forgiveness, acceptance, and surrender. Living is no easy task, but worth every breath.