“Just for today I will be happy. This assumes to be true what Abraham Lincoln said, that ‘Most folks are as happy as they make their minds up to be.’” (Just For Today Card)
When one wakes up in the morning, one might find oneself in quite a grump, either because one is physically tired or net yet fully awake or because one has acquired the habit of adopting a combination of gloom about ‘reality’ and dread about ‘the future’ as the opening sally of the day.
Whatever the reason, this has to be stopped. If one accepts this baseline and then tries to track back from there to some semblance of normality and happiness, the journey is long and arduous, and one’s own initial commitment to unhappiness puts up sturdy resistance.
God does not seem particularly interested in helping those who have decided that they do not like His universe and what goes on in it. ‘Please yourself’ is the courteous extension of liberty to adopt whatever view one wishes.
However, if one makes the decision that the world is marvellous and the future is securely in God’s hands, the full weight of God seems to come in to support it.
One has to want this. One has to want this more than wants one’s historical, hysterical, and habitual position of put-upon cynicism, the brave, bitter little smile, the plaintive insistence on the inevitability of misery.