Deeper things- can you be happy and miserable?

For me, as yet, no. Last evening I felt miserable, as miserable as yet I've known...generally bad from head to toe, with certain stopping points in between expressing their displeasure with more strength of conviction. But, today, after a good night sleep, I feel a little less miserable, and I was worried that this would be the day chemo would really do its delayed number. So...here's my lesson for today: One doesn't need to feel well to feel happy, one just needs to feel less miserable to let some happiness flow back in. In my life I have generally felt well throughout years 1-57, so, I have only limited knowledge of this kind of happiness. Another good day, is just, well, another good day in a string of so many. It is no big cause to celebrate...but today...I feel weak, but not nauseated and not in any stomach pain...the antibiotic may be helping in that regard... today, I will enjoy living life here, and maybe even let a little happiness seep in....here's my celebration poem!!!! ENJOY!!!! (Another Naomi Shihab Nye masterpiece)

So Much Happiness

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
A wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
Something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
And disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
And now live over a quarry of noise and dust
Cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
It too could wake up filled with possibilities
Of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
And love even the floor which needs to be swept,
The soiled linens and scratched records….

Since there is no place large enough
To contain so much happiness,
You shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
Into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
For the moon, but continues to hold it, and to share it,
And in that way, be known.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~