Aggressively Happy: A Realist's Guide to Believing in the Goodness of Life

by Joy Marie Clarkson

Accepting the full breadth of both the deep pleasure and deep pain of life can seem like too much for a heart to bear.

Sadness tells me how precious the world is. She tells me how deeply she has loved, how dearly she has hoped, how fully she has trusted.

She weeps not because loss meant nothing, but because it meant a great, great deal.

that my body was not a mere vehicle for good works, but a means of grace.

That it spoke to me of the mysteries of God. That when I silenced it, I silenced God.

You are not a machine. You are more like a garden.

When I pause to take care of myself, I acknowledge implicitly that the world will go on without me. That my “self” cannot do everything. That I am not God. Self-care is a realization of the limits of the self, a hearkening to the fundamentally contingent nature of being a human. It is not closed in a little bubble of selfishness, but a gentle, trusting acknowledgment that God is God and I am not. When you rest, you tell the truth about the world.

Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travellers.”1

What we need is a reason to keep trying to make it whole.

We should fight for justice, for others and ourselves, because we want everyone to have a beautiful, gentle life.

Love is not becoming less of yourself; it is giving the fullness of yourself to another person.