I saw this title on a magazine cover and thought, rolling my eyes really, nothing would make me happy, or anyone for that matter. At any given moment in time you either are happy, or you aren’t. And if you aren’t, as you will not be sometimes, why not just let that be. You see life happens. This coming from a person that does everything she can in her power to shut the doors to evil happenings. Yet, when life happens, life tests you, you you you! It doesn’t matter. You will fail sometimes. Get over it. But other times you will rise above. Enjoy it.

So yeah. Whatever. Happy or not happy. Be. You are needed. You have a right to be here. No need to explain. No need to show worth. No need to be happy (True: it is worth pondering on why you’re doing what you’re doing if it doesn’t make you happy but why not go beyond that…). You after all made it against all the odds. Just the act of living is a serious matter as the poet says…

Also, I know :)))

 

On Living

Nazim Hikmet
—Translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk

I

Living is no laughing matter:
you must live with great seriousness
like a squirrel, for example—
I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
I mean living must be your whole occupation.
Living is no laughing matter:
you must take it seriously,
so much so and to such a degree
that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,
your back to the wall,
or else in a laboratory
in your white coat and safety glasses,
you can die for people—
even for people whose faces you’ve never seen,
even though you know living
is the most real, the most beautiful thing.
I mean, you must take living so seriously
that even at seventy, for example, you’ll plant olive trees—
and not for your children, either,
but because although you fear death you don’t believe it,
because living, I mean, weighs heavier.

II

Let’s say we’re seriously ill, need surgery—
which is to say we might not get up
from the white table.
Even though it’s impossible not to feel sad
about going a little too soon,
we’ll still laugh at the jokes being told,
we’ll look out the window to see if it’s raining,
or still wait anxiously
for the latest newscast. . .
Let’s say we’re at the front—
for something worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
we might fall on our face, dead.
We’ll know this with a curious anger,
but we’ll still worry ourselves to death
about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
Let’s say we’re in prison
and close to fifty,
and we have eighteen more years, say,
before the iron doors will open.
We’ll still live with the outside,
with its people and animals, struggle and wind—
I mean with the outside beyond the walls.
I mean, however and wherever we are,
we must live as if we will never die.

III

This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet—
I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space . . .
You must grieve for this right now
—you have to feel this sorrow now—
for the world must be loved this much
if you’re going to say “I lived”. . .