The Tea Bag of Happiness

Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you. – Hafiz

This Hafiz quote is from Taoseña’s Dora McQuaid’s FaceBook wall.  I credit her as curator, connoisseur of quotes, and fellow explorer in the land of joy.

       Happiness is staging a guerilla attack.  Today, I had tea at my old friend’s house.  The teabag of Yogi tea, Lemon –ginger, thanks for asking, said,

“ Inspiring others towards happiness brings you happiness.”  I know, I know, I am being what we in the Santa Fe environs call “woo woo.”   But I have been wrestling with my ego, it that what wrestling with the angel is about too?  The messenger between me and the divine, my glorious ego is something I fret about a lot.  I never feel as if I do a good enough job.  I go through pre-performance anxiety and then afterwards, a large amount of energy in self-critiquing.  Plus, people give me notes and each time I try to improve.  I hope it doesn’t become like my horseback riding as a girl where I became almost paralyzed with form and forgot to have fun riding. So, knowing that maybe what I am doing is inspiring is a good thing.

      Today, I visited a composition class at Northern New Mexico College.  I have visited my friend Carrie Vogel’s classes often over the years.  I love meeting with local students who live five miles away from me, but didn’t have Beti shoving and shoveling books at them.  Let’s face it, nobody had a mom like Beti.  I always tell about her, and I read and talk too much, and then the students write.  These are quiet students in class but they wrote and some read in the final fifteen minutes of class.  Here is one, and more are coming I hope.  We begin with chile and the state question:

Green or Red?

Green is the flavor

I miss if I'm away

Red had variety

Each recipe unique

Both have the heat

But which to choose?

Why not both?

Christmas can 

Be every day

    by Nikolas Aivaliotis

  I like this poem, written by a young man with a skateboard,  because the last lines reflect how I feel now.  The PL life is the holiday season. I  also think writing a poem increases endorphins, the happiness hormone  that is produced by our body. I don’t know if there has been research, though there has been that writing can be healing in arthritis and asthma.  Also, that doing a good deed or watching someone else do a good deed increases endorphins.  So I think writing does, obviously, and chile does too.  Now that has been researched.  

Now you know why the quote on my ginger-lemon teabag was a good omen.

Right after a sweet experience, I received a message from the Yogi Tea folks.

It is also fitting as for Halloween I am making a necklace of teabags and being grumpy.  I am going as “Grumpy About the Tea Party.”  Don’t want to wear out my happiness.