In End the Struggle and Dance With Life, Susan wrote about finding the joy within the pain. The world can be a weighty place and when the burden becomes too much it can be hard, to say the least, to find the moments of joy that we are blessed with every day. She shared this anecdote about choosing misery or choosing joy.
Yes, even in the midst of very challenging circumstances we can learn how to turn our inner dial to joy instead of misery as Barry Neil Kaufman shows us in his moving book “Happiness is a Choice.” Kaufman speaks from his and his wife’s personal experience of healing their neurologically impaired and dysfunctioning child. When this potentially devastating circumstance first came into their life, they actively chose happiness instead of misery. And it made all the difference in the world. It is interesting that someone who also had a dysfunctioning child bitterly chastised Kaufman for taking something that was terrible and making believe it was beautiful. Kaufman gently replied… “Did you ever consider that you might be taking something that’s beautiful and making believe it’s terrible?”
Wow! A lesson for us all! Yes, happiness is a choice; we can find much to be joyous about in any situation in our life simply by turning our inner dial to joy.