happiness is not a place, it a direction. its easy to lose sight that this is not bad. that the things we have and were given are best taken as a gift. to remember that it will go and we will cry when that happens. that everyone and everything you currently have will go. for better or worse. that there is little to regret, for like other things that bring in sadness, this emotion will simply ruin the amount of time you have left. and with this time, play, work and rest at a proportion you can find.

do your best to brighten up everyone and anything we come across. to assist and to laugh, to laugh at it all. to see the game as just that and take nothing as serious as we know it all is. to attempt to get lost in it. not to let all the truth creep up into our conscious. to enjoy the moments and the spring and the falls. to know where the faults lie and do our best to not fall into them. And we do, to get up and try to repeat without falling into it again.

melancholy is inevitable. but like pain, you can lean into it. enjoy the awkwardness the issues that are arising, the delayed flight and the marks in your own shell. there is something about contrast in the world that makes them necessary. the pendulum only swings one way if it has gone the other. pain stands as a benchmark for what the upside can take you. if we can enjoy this fall, then we have solved it.