Begin by accepting the bare minimum,
expectations so small they fit in the palm of your hand.
Practice saying it’s fine in the mirror,
especially on days when it isn’t.
Avoid mornings.
If you must wake, do it slowly—
fight it so joy can’t slip between your eyelids
or get inhaled with your breath.
Do not stretch: stretching feels optimistic.
Remain idle.
Busy hands have a habit
of inventing small joys—
a task completed, a problem solved.
Satisfaction is how happiness sneaks in.
If laughter approaches, treat it like weather.
Wait it out.
Remember all the times it rained
after you trusted the sun.
Scroll through social media.
Follow millionaires, follow supermodels.
Compare! Compare! Compare!
Focus on everything you lack.
Measure your life in mundaneness:
laundry loads, deadlines, unpaid bills.
Never ask what something means
when you can ask what it costs.
At night, review the day carefully.
Note any moments that almost lifted you.
Make a plan to avoid those in the future.
Always sleep with one eye open.
Happiness is sneaky,
likes to creep in uninvited.
If you stay vigilant long enough,
it will learn
to pass you by.
About the Creator
Tina D. Lopez
I have a lot of silly things (some dark things) inside my head, so I write them down. Sometimes they turn into poems.
My book Love Ain’t No Friend of Mine is available on Amazon. https://a.co/d/6JYBmLH
Keep reading
More stories from Tina D. Lopez and writers in Poets and other communities.
December 8, 1980
When I was six or seven, my stepdad came into my life, and I remember thinking he knew everything. He could befriend anybody, anywhere. In grocery stores, he chatted with strangers over cuts of meat; at gas stations, he bonded with people pumping fuel over how the smell of gasoline was disgusting and yet enjoyable. In restaurants, he took an interest in waiters’ lives—like Steve, whose father was dying of cancer. When Steve’s dad died, my new dad attended the funeral.
By Tina D. LopezExclusive • 21 days ago
from death into life
Young Aldin of Wiloh had never contemplated death. It was almost strange — so many around him had the tendency to obsess over it, to clamor and claw almost desperately at their own perceptions of the end to know death as much as they could: when it would come, why it would come, where it would take them when it did.
By angela hepworth2 days ago in Fiction
Comments (1)
I like "busy hands have a habit of inventing small joys"