The White Lace Story

The White Lace Story

The warm summer wind blows constant through the trees outside.  It lifts the underside of the leaves, making the entire hillside of aspens shiver.
So many voices rise up through the space in the house.  They carry the celebration.  The house is full to the brim with people who have come for the wedding.  Like a family reunion ought to be, everyone is fully brought to life by each other.  Brought to life by the sheer abundance of precious moments of pure connection that happen when everyone is together with nothing to do except seek enjoyment.

We think that happiness is always a good thing.  But the truth is, the subconscious mind does not always agree with us.  The truth is for some of us happiness is like a pot at the end of the rainbow.  It hovers in the future like an unreachable goal that we dream of but don’t think that we can reach.  How did we end up this way?  We ended up this way because we suffered so much in our lives that happiness began to feel false.  We ended up this way because we felt blindsided by painful experiences.  When we are blindsided by painful experiences, especially when we are feeling good, we start to feel like happiness turns us into sitting ducks.  We start to feel as if happiness is vulnerability that leaves us open for attack at any moment.
This belief system can ride on the back of seemingly insignificant events in childhood.

 For example, the three year old child is laughing hysterically while running and is not looking where they are going only to fall and hurt themselves.  They might make the subconscious decision that happiness is unsafe and find that the emotional fall from elation to utter powerlessness and injury is so unbearable that they would rather just stay on guard and not let themselves feel elation for the sake of their own safety.  Another example is a child who gets super excited only to be disappointed.  They might make the subconscious conclusion that excitement inevitably leads to disappointment, so they would rather just not get their hopes up in the first place.  Another example is a child growing up with a parent who is a chronic worrier.  This child may be playing joyfully when their parent repeatedly and in a panicked tone warns them about bad things that could happen.  This instills the child with fear of the world and teaches the child to distrust their positive emotional states as if happiness and fun were a dangerous illusion.