Yikes! I am becoming my father ...

"If you have a positive thought your body actually goes into a positive vibration, you actually attract everything that resonates with that vibration."

(sent to me courtesy of Insight of the Day to which I subscribe)

It reminds me of Dad's little books of homilies for living a happier, more successful life ... you know ... the kind that Amway salesmen promote ... Dale Carnegie stuff.

But the really scary thing is that I believe this! I believe that happiness begets happiness.

I have found since I retired and began wearing glasses that people smile more at me. I figure I probably smile more myself, and I likely look less threatening than I used to. Now I am simply a little old bespectacled smiling lady. I exude no sex appeal, no power, just bemused niceness.

I like pronoia (the antidote to paranoia), Rob Brezny's philosophy, although I do balk when it gets too saccharine.

I like being around positive people and walk away from complainers.

Dad used to get headaches when I would lecture him about socialism and the evils of American imperialism. I get headaches just remembering all those wasted hours and days and weeks, yes, years, of trying to convince people that they should boycott Kraft products, Dare cookies and lettuce harvested by Mexican slaves for their capitalist masters.

We were smarter, I think, but we looked just as foolish handing out pamphlets outside grocery stores as that lone guy I saw on Bank Street the other day. He was haranguing passersby about God.

We were right and time has proven us so, but no one wanted to listen, so it was foolish to try to convince them. All those other old Wafflers are probably just like their parents now too ... complacent ... trying to shut out the doomsayers even though they know they are right.

But it isn't just this longing for peace in my valley. It is also how and where I choose to live. Dad chose a place in the mountains of the Eastern Townships where he could be free to enjoy nature. He lived for a while with a partner, but was happiest when he became a hermit again ... a hermit with one good friend.

I don't think he disliked people any more than I do. He liked to interact on a superficial level with the neighbours and tradespeople he encountered every day, but he liked going home to his hermitage. He called his place Shangri-La.

I like knowing I am part of a community and I value my friends, but I like living alone with Kenya. A hermit enjoys a freedom that is not possible when you live with most people.

I look at happy couples who seem like two halves of a whole while remaining fully themselves as well. There aren't that many, or at least I haven't seen that many. Some days I think it would be nice to find someone to share this life, but I am not sure I could begin that long process of becoming part of a comfortable couple again.