"It is easy to be heavy..."

"It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light." G.K. Chesterton, "The Eternal Revolution"

A few years ago I read "The Happiness Project" by Gretchen Rubin and that quote pops up everywhere in that book. I didn't give it much thought until a few weeks ago when I realized that I had been being very "heavy" for a long time, without even realizing it. That "heaviness" had been pulling everything down, my happiness especially.

I saw a friend whose husband has been battling a really serious form of cancer, and she asked me how we were doing. Through my mind flashed a hundred complaints--how busy we were, how much we were being asked to serve and do, with our baby on top of it, how overwhelming it is. I was able to push the complaints aside and tell her the more positive parts of our life. The cute things our baby was doing. The parts that weren't overwhelming to me. When I asked how she and her husband were, she told me about an operation her husband was going to have in two days.

As I was walking home, the absurdity of that moment hit me--I almost complained to my friend? To THAT friend? Because we are busy? Because I can't get around to cleaning my bathrooms every week? I have a healthy husband, a healthy baby, wonderful opportunities to grow and serve, wonderful family and friends, comfortable income...and I almost complained?

I thought these three things, and have been trying to improve based on them:
1. I have been being so self-centered
2. My problems are so silly. I have so much to be grateful for.
3. How could I be so insensitive to her? Or, almost be.

There's a lot to be said about being honest, about telling people how you're really doing when they ask. About not responding "fine" out of habit. But there is much to be said about gratitude and sensitivity and wisdom and accepting life's ups-and-downs, especially the silly ones, with grace. There is much to be said about choosing to be light.

I've been the one in the situation where, when I ask, "how are you?" the complaints come like rain, watering a desert. No real problems. Nothing to complain about. In those situations I quietly shut the gate to my garden of problems and respond, when asked, "fine."

"It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light."