What I know is that happiness is certain. As I sit here finishing up work things to wrap the day up, I’m having a nice realization. No matter how bad things are, they always get better. No matter how great things are, they always get worse. The spirit of the times brings many gifts. Sometimes we don’t want these gifts and we begin to suffer. Each day you wake up to moments on a grand, spinning wheel of time. Each ticking of the clock, a thought, a conversation, an activity. Time passes. This is the surface level. Beneath this experience of the daily grind, a subtle, cryptic, pervading presence envelops all of it–the day, the thoughts, the gifts.

This presence is not just our awareness. It is so much more than that–it is an actual goodness. I’m tempted to go into the shpeal of the universe mirrors back to us our thoughts, we are only experiencing ourselves, blah, blah, blah. But, what I want to state in this post today is simple. No matter how much pain, how much anger, how much poverty, how much sickness, how much loss you have experienced in your life, the universe will still make you happy. You will be driving on the freeway one day and realize it. You will wake up in the middle of the night one night and realize it. You will be in the middle of a conversation at the grocery store and you will realize it.You will realize a million times over in your life a subtle, simple all pervading beauty in back of all the experiences good or bad.

The tidal waves of time will keep giving to you and keep taking back. You will never, ever escape this cycle. You cannot possess anything you have forever. Not a single person, not your health, not your possessions, your family, your job, your bank account status or even your life as it is right now. This world is not set up to stay the way it is. Everything is a coming and a going. The realization and then the acceptance of this matter is the gateway to these precious moments of happiness that contain all the potential of THIS MOMENT NOW.

As you drink your tea find this moment, as you cook food find this moment, as you engage with others find this moment…but don’t get attached to it. This moment is here to be present with you. It is not here for any other reason. Don’t miss out on it by wanting, holding on, controlling, seeking, trying to understand, prove, live. You don’t have to strive to feel elation, joy, love in every moment.That’s escaping the moment.

But when you become present here and now, you will find those things. They’re here floating among you, in every breath. Wait for them if you must, but they will come. Happiness is certain.