I have lots to be happy about. Let's start with this morning. I woke up following some very interesting dreams, well-slept and well-rested and was out of bed before 5:30. I feel healthy and energetic today. I live on the quiet side of my building, which is no small feat, given that I live on Granville Street in downtown Vancouver. The laundry room was clean and well-ordered and unoccupied this morning. I had enjoyable little chats in passing with other tenants while on my way to the laundry room, with a Chinese-Canadian tenant, and with a Honduran and a Colombian both of whom live on my floor, and we chat often in Spanish. I am enjoying a personally blended coffee, all quality and rather pricey beans, from Guatemala, Colombia and elsewhere. I just had a three egg omelette stuffed with Asiago and Emmental cheese, and whole wheat bread with natural peanut butter and raspberry jam. I enjoy good health and an enjoyable job in a flexible workplace. My rent, being indexed to my income, is scandalously cheap, for which reason I can still live in this horrifically expensive, and horrifically beautiful city of Vancouver.
Which also means that there are people sleeping on the sidewalk outside my building. They haven't been as fortunate as me. I am poor, yet I have everything that I need. I get to travel for two months in February and March, to Colombia for three weeks, followed by a month in Costa Rica. In both countries I will be staying with friends who are from those countries. In Monteverde de Costa Rica I will be paying my way because I will be staying in my friends' bed and breakfast. They also spoil me in other ways. In Colombia I will be staying with a friend I made on the Conversation Exchange Page, with whom I've been Skyping in Spanish and English for the past year and a half. I will be staying with him for free, though I do plan to cook for us while I'm there. Although I will be giving my Colombian friend support in English, for the most part I will be spending two months living in Spanish, which will be great for my fluency.
How am I able to do this? Well, I don't spend a lot of money, except for food and other bare necessities. I almost never eat out. I could use some new things for my apartment, but am still able to make do. I have no expensive habits, outside of coffee, and even so, I have managed to not get re-addicted to caffeine. I don't smoke or drink alcohol and never go out to shows, movies or concerts. I just don't have time or energy. I don't have a car, and that saves me close to one thousand a month. And I don't have a smart phone, not even a cell phone. And I am very happy not to have one!
Okay, my life is modest, frugal. To some, even austere. This could also be because I have a calling to live modestly and simply as part of my life witness and expression as a follower of Christ and servant of God. God provides everything that I need, and this all gets somehow reinvested into my life of service and prayer. I can only do these foreign trips because they are part of my life work and witness. It has been by God's grace that I have become so unusually fluent in Spanish.
Yes, I have much to be happy about. But the Christ whom I follow is also the Man of Sorrows. My happiness must be qualified and modified by the many breaking hearts that surround me, beginning here in my apartment building. The fact that we are living in a country that has become a near kleptocracy, where the wealthiest minority gets to keep more and more and the poor get less and less, and we have more and more people in this city becoming poor., could make anyone miserable.
It isn't that I am happy. Rather, I have joy, a deep and inexhaustible joy that springs out of love and gratitude. They have made studies that indicate that the happiest people aren't the wealthiest, nor the strongest, nor the most attractive. The happiest people, it has been found, are those who have strong religious faith, and people who give generously their time, resources and loving hearts to others. To those of us for whom our community and our family extend well beyond our neighbourhoods and the connections of blood and kinship.
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