Abbreviated Spring Break trip this year

We won't be going to Arizona as we planned, nor even to Florida or Georgia this Spring Break. We have had too many things happen recently to enjoy this trip. We also have too many things to do at home, that we have neglected for far too long, to spend a week away. We might take a few days and go to Charleston, SC. We'll see.

Ralph is walking, albeit on three legs. Suzzie died last week.

Happiness isn't some outcome when everything is going great.

Happiness is the context of how we interpret and respond to life's moments.

We care for Ralph and carry him where he needs to go and nurse him back to health.

We keep Suzzie comfortable as her life ends. We hold our children and cry along with them when we lose her.

We call our friends and family and listen with our empathy and sympathy to their own tragedies and conflicts. (A friend recently lost her mother and is now undergoing another major life change. My older children are all in various states of health or wealth flux. A cousin was just diagnosed with a life changing illness. My sister balances professional and home life with two young children while her spouse is rehabbing from a surgery. Life never seems "normal," does it?)

Happy people not only embrace the good and the pleasant, they endure the bad and the difficult. We understand that both are required. Strength comes from love and support of each other. Sadness is not despair.

Life's hurts and losses deepen our understanding and appreciation of life's blessings and pleasures.

We become happier, on a much deeper level, because we have endured.

Visualizing the ordinary

But if ever a magazine could capture that, then this is it. This photo was taken by a contributor, Jeremy Stockwell (who had two photos published in this first issue.)

Life Images is basically a large photo album with short text (no more than 450 words) attached. The photography isn't too artsy and the images are just beyond ordinary. Pick this one up now, because the Spring Issue comes out in April. The cover price is $14.99.

Leafing through it is a calming experience, grounding us in the everyday. The sky, water, flowers, feet, birds, faces, hands, shadows, and myriad things of life's routine captured in still images with bits of text in the form of quotes, poems, raw emotions, false affectations, or simple explanations turn out, in aggregate, to be far more powerful than I anticipated. The tag line for the magazine is "A collection of captured moments and inspired journaling." That says it pretty well. I like it and recommend it.

I think we could all use a little ordinary some of the time.