Life is hard.

No argument there.

No matter what another person’s life looks like, it is important to remember that no one is exempt from pain, sorrow, angst and loss. Every one. Every day.

And it’s mostly effortless for us to recognise and wax lyrical about the messy. Days and months can go by where we struggle to find the bliss or are too emotionally and physically exhausted to create the bliss.

But bliss is there.

Sometimes, when it isn’t living in our heart, we need to go outside ourselves and look for it; let it envelop us.

Definition of bliss:

blɪs/Submit

• noun

1.
perfect happiness; great joy.
“she gave a sigh of bliss”
synonyms:
joy, pleasure, delight, happiness, gladness, ecstasy, elation, rapture,euphoria, heaven, paradise, seventh heaven, cloud nine, Eden,Utopia, Arcadia; More

• verb

informal
1.
reach a state of perfect happiness, oblivious of everything else.
“Josh is just blissed out, always smiling”

Notice that the definition of bliss ranges from pleasure to gladness to ecstasy—a huge range.

Bliss makes me tingle.

It’s the feeling I get when I am overwhelmed with love and pride for my children.

It’s the overwhelming aaaah I feel when I see natural beauty.

And yes, sometimes it’s created within when the stars have aligned, when I’m feeling peace, love and satisfaction with a job I consider well done.

Recently, family members that couldn’t be at my daughter’s wedding in September asked me to read the toast I’d written for the beautiful couple, which I hadn’t looked at since the wedding.

Reading my own words out loud again, I was stunned that I became all verklempt. I guess because it was a timely reminder for myself, as well as a reminder of a divinely love-filled event, bliss.

Particularly, this little blip, a fraction of the message, struck home because it’s pretty much a world-truth:

How do you teach your four year old that perfection is an illusion? That life is messy and hard and full of imperfect surprises, but that there will be moments of pure bliss. And it’s those moments or hours or days of bliss that make life as close to perfect as we humans can experience. Chasing the impossible perfect will drive one mad and would be horribly boring if we found it. But when the moments of bliss do arise, like today, you’ve peeked into perfect.

Be patient with those that seem to go on about the good things in their lives. Some folks are just in awe of how the Universe unfolds its magic.

No matter how perfect people’s stories sound, there are layers of sweat and grime and tears and heartbreak that lie in support of their bliss.

No one is exempt from messy—but one glimpse of bliss trumps a whole bunch of mess.

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Editorial Assistant: Kerrie Shebiel/Editor: Bryonie Wise

Photo: Courtesy of elephant journal Archives