Mara

You know that one movie with that one girl where just when everything in her life gets pretty sucky, things suddenly start to turn around?

The movie starts out with her getting a job — which is great!!–, but then having a terrible day with her students. A kid swears at her and continues to badger her with snide remarks for the rest of the hour. And then she calls her best friend who tells her that she has a love-interest in our main character’s former fiance. The former fiance is kind of a creep, kind of a little boy, and kind of a sex-addict. And he would LOVE to rub it in her face that he “won” in the end by getting her best friend. That’s how he works: loving to preach the Good News, but a weasel when it comes to friends and social status.

Also, her mom is getting more and more sick and she’s worried she won’t be able to get out of bed for long.

She’s living at home and is “new in town” and doesn’t even know where to look for new friends, let alone even really think about getting new friends because she’s realized things with friends get complicated very fast and she lacks a lot in charity. Plus she doesn’t click with the people she sees around town.

… Until …

She meets a guy at a coffee shop. Her mom gets better. Her students start to love and respect her. She gets married. Has nine kids. Lives in a cottage. Raises sheep and bees. Makes friends for keeps.

Are we entitled to happiness? The movies sure make us think so. Happiness is a gift. Those things that happen to that one girl in that one movie come from both within and also from without.

God wants us to be happy, something we forget. If you don’t believe in God, you must still value happiness. But, what does it look like?

Might I offer a few thoughts?

It seems to me that the happiest people are those who have endured much suffering. After all, the movie wouldn’t have the “umph” without seeing how much she had to suffer in order to appreciate the great things that come after the suffering. Naomi from the Old Testament changes her name to Mara which means bitterness. But, Ruth marries Boaz and things suddenly go GREAT for Naomi!

There’s Immaculée Ilibagiza who lost her family, 50 pounds, and 91 days of her life cramped in a bathroom during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. I had the privilege of seeing her speak at my University some years back. She was one of the happiest of women I have ever seen.

Elisabeth Leseur, whose friends and husband lauded her as a joyful, happy woman, endured great suffering.

While the youth in America — who should be the HAPPIEST on earth what with health, technology, food, comfort, entertainment, the best education system in the world, have the highest suicide rate.

America’s veins are riddled with Ritalin. And we have goddamn welfare. So what have we got to be miserable about?

Naomi, Immaculée, Elisabeth had plenty to be miserable about in our terms. But listen up: screw the modern American ideal of happiness; screw the “oh poor, simple-minded Naomi who didn’t have McDonalds to get her through the tough times” attitude because these women were [are] happy. Don’t you envy that? Don’t you wonder what they all have in common? These women from all corners of the earth and different centuries?

It would be worth thinking long and hard about.