Finding your happy place

my happy place

This feeling of almost overwhelming funk. Watching the news certainly hasn’t helped: tragedy both here and abroad and the constant political back biting. It’s exhausting. Plus, I didn’t go to my happy place this year: the beach. Oh, how I love the beach. But alas, our schedules did not permit such a getaway this year. It’s all left me feeling unrested and restless.

I thought it was just me. But it’s not. I’ve talked to several people who seem to be stuck in a similar funk. Just knowing I’m not alone helped lighten the weight a little.

There are plenty of folks much smarter and wiser than I whom you can turn to for advice. Many will tell you to pray and read scripture, and I’d be the first to agree that those two actions may do you a world of good.

But sometimes you need an immediate anti-funk injection.

And I discovered one quite by accident this afternoon. It worked for me, and I’m hoping it may work for you, too:

Think of a song from your youth.

A song that the 13-year old you would sing loudly and with absolute abandon.

Download it to your iPod or find the CD or whatever.

Get in your car, put on your sunglasses (even at night).

Play that song loudly.

Sing it ever louder. I mean, belt that sucker OUT!

When you get to a stop light, play air guitar. If you draw attention to yourself, all the better.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Will this little mini concert make the world a little less ugly? Probably not.

Is it a long term solution to your heavy heart? Most probably not.

But maybe, just maybe.

It will help you realize what I did.

That buried beneath all that heaviness we all tend to carry all too often,

there is joy.

We just need a little help finding it sometimes.

*Editor’s Note: The above video is the medley I stumbled upon this afternoon. And while I’ll admit that the 13-year old me was a big Journey fan, it could have been any number of belt-worthy songs.