Hello!!! Did you miss me? smile.
You may have noticed from my Instagram posts that I’m leaning into smiling and happiness and living. After all, we are still alive – yes? We should LIVE then. How do we do that during the chaos and craziness of life? Obviously, there are loads of ways to deal with the sadness, the losses, the depression, the anxiety. Today, I’m choosing this one thing to write about.
The wisest man who ever lived said this, “A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.”
King Solomon knew how to live well, he had wisdom beyond any other and he was given answers for a vast array of problems. So, I have chosen his words as a good way to respond to the devastation the world hands us.
Other versions say things like: …is like medicine, keeps you healthy, refreshes one, improves the body, promotes health, makes aging flourish, is like a good medicine…
We think: Yeah, if I had a cheerful heart, I could be healthy, I could live well, I could feel refreshed. But no, I have a crushed spirit, dried up bones, I’m slowly dying, I’m sad, I have a depressed spirit. Of course, I’m tired, depressed, not living well, expiring. We agree with the saying. We agree with the reality of it. I think… We are missing something.
Perhaps what King Solomon was trying to tell us is more like this: If you will choose a cheerful heart, a happy heart, a joyful mindset, THEN you will have a built-in medicine that keeps you healthy and refreshes you, you will find that in aging you flourish (not being slowly robbed of energy and life). You will have internal medicine that quite LITERALLY heals you and improves you.
Sometimes, when there is nothing else to choose, you can choose cheerfulness and happiness. Find the smallest thing to embrace and enjoy. Take the quickest moment to truly taste that good cup of coffee. Pull up a podcast that you know will lighten your heart. Watch a comedy special. Find a way to smile and to laugh – this matters – more than we know – this matters. Do it.
Find a way to encourage your heart to be cheerful and see what happens to the rest of your life.
YOU ARE A POWERFUL PERSON, MY FRIEND. YOU CAN CHOOSE.
Much love, much care. We need you to be healthy.
