Before I was Rebecca Cofiño, I was Rebecca Harmon.

You need to know that to understand this story.

Ten years ago I drove across the country by myself, from New Orleans to Spokane, Washington.  I made a few pit stops along the way: White Sands, the Grand Canyon and even Las Vegas.

When I arrived in Las Vegas, the sun was setting.  It’s a place I never had much interest in seeing, but it was on my way, so I decided to check it out.  I’m not a gambler, but I did try it out for the five hours I was there, turning $20 to $120 and ending at $95.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  This story is about sunset on the Las Vegas strip.

I was driving down the famous strip in my silver VW Beetle containing all my worldly possessions.  While I drove, the sky was burnt off its pink glow and the lights brightened in the falling darkness.  I had no idea where I was I was going.  Suddenly, I saw this:

How had no one ever told me that Harmon Avenue was a major intersection on the Las Vegas strip? 

Was I the first from my father’s side to visit the casinos in the desert?  Had no friend ever looked up on a wild weekend and seen an interesting bit of trivia?

I fumbled in my backpack to get my camera so I could snap this picture.  Remember, no smart phones ten years ago.  I accidentally sliced the middle of my thumbnail with my razor while fishing around for that camera while driving, so let me share another a useful bit of trivia with you.  There is a CVS at the very end of the strip.

Thank God.

What brought this memory to mind?

Well, Max just got a new dinosaur book and look what I found?

REBBACHISAURUS (re-BACK-eh-SORE-us)

Come on, people!  Tell me these things! 

I ought to have known that I was named after a giant, gambling, African dinosaur from the late Cretaceous period who, of course, was vegetarian.   

Now, what else am I missing?

Last month we stumbled upon an arbor with wishes at Fairchild Tropical Garden.  Were they written for the new year?  A special event?  I don’t want to know.

Keep mysteries alive.

Keep wishes dangling from secret coves.

That’s the world I want to live in.

It’s been a lovely week with all the people closest to my heart physically close to me as well.

As the year draws to a close and children unwrap presents, nostalgia fills me.  There will be time for reflection later.  Today let me wish all of you a very Merry Christmas with blessings of health and happiness, peace and comfort today and always.

Love,

Rebecca

Wham!

We keep getting blasted!

The sun is shining; the sky is blue as ever, but a life-storm keeps knocking my little family around.

Wham!

Hours cut!

Wham!

Car breaks down!

Wham!

Insurance rate triples!

Wham!

Freelance work slows!

It reminds me of that classic board game, Payday, where game pieces move around a calendar month and players keep drawing mail cards.  Some are bills, some are postcards and some are checks.  I keep waiting for our windfall, but it feel like we’re stuck in a bad luck rut.

Yet the world outside is stunningly beautiful, and despite these massive hard-knocks, the world inside my heart is stunningly beautiful too.  I’m not sad.  I’m not terribly worried.  I’m not seething with anger.

I’m patient.

Honestly, that’s how I feel.  I am biding my time for the storm to clear.  I am awaiting tremendous good fortune.  I am confident that somehow it will arrive.   It feels like its on the way.  It will be such a wonderful surprise to see how everything works out in the end.

I’m an eternal optimist.

In college I had a friend who labeled herself an optimistic pessimist. 

“What’s does that mean,” I asked.

“I always hope things will get better,” she said, then added with a sly grin, “But I know they won’t.”  

I laughed and furrowed my brow.  I was going through what I now refer to as My Dark Time. 

“I guess I’m a pessimistic optimist,” I hypothesized.  “I know things will be great in the future, but it totally sucks right now.”

Twelve years later I’ve become something I never knew I could be: a genuine eternal, internal optimist. 

It’s such a revelation to know that all happiness is a choice.  Joy is constantly available from the universe, and I finally learned how to access it on a daily basis.  Circumstances are truly irrelevant. 

As I read these sentences, they sound so authoritative and confident.  Please know that they are a complete surprise to me.  I’m a bit shocked and dazed over my ability to be happy with so much stress and pain surrounding me.  The hits are real.  The problems I face loom large, but somehow a part of me remains unscathed and completely open and available to everyday joy.

Many years ago a deacon at church spoke about parents who had lost their young child to a drunk driver.  At his funeral, they insisted on the playing How Can I Keep from Singing?  If you don’t know the hymn, it goes like this:

No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that rock I’m clinging.
Since love is the Lord of Heaven and Earth
How can I keep from singing?

Tears welled in my eyes as I sat on the hard wooden pew: for those parents, and in astonishment of their faith.  I admired them, but couldn’t comprehend how to have such strength of heart.  My own heart was wild, passionate and tumultuous.  Only my head could ever remain calm, and that was useless when emotions took over.

And so, I planted a seed.

The first time my fingertips ever rose to greet the sun in salutation, I planted a seed.  As I stretched with every fiber of my being towards a light I could never touch, I thought I was exercising my body.  Unbeknownst to me, as I physically reached outward, I reached inward spiritually.  I planted a seed deep in the middle of my heart, or maybe I just brought the first rays of light to a seed that was already there.

Yes, I believe that seed was already present.  It was that distant optimist inside me during My Dark Time.  That person moved by faith.  That desire to have a strong, connected heart.  As I delved deeper into yoga, I learned what that seed was: the lotus of the heart.

The lotus of the heart is central in the yogic world view.  Here is a description from Chandogya Upanishad:

Within the city of Brahman, which is the body, there is the heart, and within the heart there is a little house.  This house has the shape of a lotus, and within it dwells that which is to be sought after, inquired about, and realized.  Even so large as the universe outside is the universe within the lotus of the heart.  Within it are heaven and earth, the sun, moon, the lightening and all the stars.  Whatever is in the macrocosm is in the microcosm also.

This sweet little story, with it’s miniature imagery, expresses a profound truth about the human heart and divine love. 

Everything dwells within us.

You know how wonderful a cup of tea is on a brisk autumn morning?  Or how lucious an ice-cream is on a blistering summer day?  Or how stunning moonlight is reflected on snow?  Or the uplifting joy at seeing tulips open from just thawed ground in spring?

Each one of those experiences seems so whole, complete and perfect that we don’t want the moment to end.  But life is tranistory.  After a while, we get sick of snow.  We even get sick of months and months of sunshine.  We constantly crave change and long to linger at the same time. 

The lotus of the heart contains all those moments and everything else we hold dear.  The entire universe is inside of us, which means we are never abandoned.  We are never lost or forsaken, even when it can feel that way when we look at the outside world.  Inside of us, we have the sun and the moon.  The snow and sunshine.  The bud of spring and the glorious death in fall.  It’s all there.  It’s all inside of us. 

Strength of heart lies in the fact that love is present within us at all times, and so happiness is too.   That’s the song those parents were singing.

The song they couldn’t help but sing.

The voice inside of me isn’t saying that everything will be OK.  It’s saying that everything is already OK.

The entire universe resides within me, including happiness, love and light.

How can I keep from singing?

I’m a world class lollygagger.

I love that word.  Lollygag.  How it sounds and what it means.  It’s old-fashioned word, the way old-fashioned is an old-fashioned word.  I wonder if it’s a old-fashioned concept too?  Do we spend time lollygagging these days?

Lately, I can’t help but throw my gaze up at the clouds in the sky and marvel.  My jaw drops in a perfect O of awe.  I keep imagining myself from the vantage of space and am amazed that gravity does such a smart job of tethering me to this spinning planet.  I am so small.  Then, like a true lollygagger I start to wonder how to define our planet.  I used to think of it as just land and water.  Terra Firma.

But what about air?

The atmosphere is just as much a part of our planet as the rock and water we can touch.  That was so elegantly demonstrated yesterday by the Austrian who jumped from a balloon at the outer edge of Earth in a fearless free dive.  It looked like he was in space, but he never left our atmosphere.  Earth consists of both the tangible and the ephemeral.

This is why I walk around with my head in the clouds.

If I were 15 years younger, I’d sign up for meteorology school and annoy the pretty weather-girl wannabes working on their forecasts with persisent questions about the nature of each and every cloud. 

But you don’t need any facts to be a lollygagger.

Just time, and the willingness to waste it.

It’s true, I have a lot on my plate these days.  I’m teaching a college course, baking for the Farmer’s Market, working as a freelance writer, building mamaguru and mothering my children.  But there is always time to lollygag.  

Children make life busy, but they also slow down the pace.  Their stride is short, so walks are long.  They need frequent outings, so I am forced to leave my To Do List behind.  In a way, time stops when we’re together.  In between pushing a swing or chasing a daring child, my time at playgrounds is wistful.  My mind wanders to concepts literally and figuratively above my head. 

Before you know it, I’m flanked by two little boys, staring up at the clouds.

Learning to lollygag.

Have you heard about the Latin exemption?

Happiness researchers have found that a people from countries in Latin America report higher levels of happiness than their circumstances typically garner.  Many of these countries have extreme poverty and governments rife with corruption and violence, yet somehow people in Latin America are able to overcome these obstacles and be happy.  Other countries in the world facing similar situations in Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia report much lower levels of happiness.  Nobody quite understands the Latin exemption, except that it exists.

The circumstances of my life took a downward spiral this year.  Our state government randomly passed a law that forced the closure of the company where my husband worked.  He has been unemployed and underemployed since March.  We have watched the savings we had diligently set aside for travel and an addition for our home dwindle.  I have picked up part-time work and my husband finally found a good job. 

But,

The same law that caused his company to close will probably force the closure of his new company in January.  The law has yet to signed by the governor and lawsuits challenging it are pending, but a pessimistic view is probably the most realistic at this point.

It’s enough to make one downright unhappy.

Except, I’m not.

I discovered the secret of the Latin exemption. 

I didn’t know I did this until last weekend when everything went wrong at Jack’s birthday party.  Illness, no shows, and heavy rain dampered the fun I had planned.  Topping it all off, my husband was unexpected called to work, so I lost my helper for a few hours right before the party.  Most of the decorations and activities needed to be outside, so there was nothing to be done but grin and bear it. 

The party started off slow, but eventually the kiddos found their stride and started running silly around the house.  When I saw Jack giggling, I stopped fretting and let the party be what it would be.  By the end of the day, my body ached.  The leftover food showed that a good portion of my work had been for nothing.  I didn’t have any great pictures because the rainclouds had blocked my natural light.  But as I headed for bed, I turned to my husband and said, “You know, it’s funny.  Everything went wrong today, but I still had a really great time.  I’m happy.  Tired, but happy.”

“I know what you mean, ” he said.  “I’m happy too.”

The following day this quote from the Dali Lama crossed my path:

Hardship, in forcing us to exercise greater patience and forbearance in daily life, actually makes us stronger and more robust. From the daily experience of hardship comes a greater capacity to accept difficulties without losing our sense of inner calm. Of course, I do not advocate seeking out hardship as a way of life, but merely wish to suggest that, if you relate to it constructively, it can bring greater inner strength and fortitude.

It summed up what I was feeling, but there’s more:

Besides inner peace, this challenging time has opened my heart to everyday joy.  This explains the Latin exemption.  When you realize that the problems you are facing are not going to go away in the foreseeable future, you realize how happiness is fundamentally a choice.  No manicure, date night or vacation are on my horizon.  We don’t even have job security or the comfort of knowing we’ll be able to pay our mortgage.  Although we are working as hard as we can, the truth is: there is no quick fix.  If we wait for things to get better to be happy, then there are no smiles forecast in our future.  

This is what I learned and what the Latins already knew:   

My life isn’t going to make me happy; I am going to make my life happy.

I must accept that this year is hard, but I do not accept that this year will be unhappy.  And so, rather than fortifying my heart, I tear down walls and open myself up further to the world.  I count my blessings with less greed than before, because I have a greater understanding of how easily those blessings could slip away.  I smile because my child is smiling, and life needs to be celebrated.

As it is.  As it is.

Do you know why flamingos are pink?

Because they eat shrimp!

Or so I’ve been told.

Last week, my neighbor surprised me with two dozen exquisite peach roses.

I know!

She works for a floral importer, so it might be old hat for her, but it was such a treat for me!  Thanks, Crystal!  I took some photos, and this one is my favorite.  It is completely unedited and reminds me of the lines which inspired Georgia O’ Keefe.

Happy Friday!  I hope someone surprises you too!

When life looms large and the weight of my responsibilities crushes me, I go the edge of the ocean to remind myself of how small I really am.

 Atlantic Ocean, John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, Key Largo, 2012