Being happy doesn’t mean having the
best of everything, although having the best of everything is wonderful. When I
was a boy we lived, barely survived really, in about the worst place in town, a
cobblestone, dead end street, darkened by the shadow of a massive old foundry
that never closed and whose noise drowned out everything else, all day and all
night with the smashing sound of enormous machines. The river was nearby and it was badly polluted
and smelled to high heavens. It left the stench of rotten eggs on our clothes
and on us. We had no toys, we lived on
welfare and we wore our shoes until they literary fell off our feet.
But yet I recall those years as the
best and happiest of my life because I shared it with my brothers and sisters.
I was never alone. We dreamed up more
adventures in one day in that God forsaken neighborhood then Hollywood could
make up in a decade. We made the best out of what we had. And that’s the key to
being happy; make the best of what you have.
You know I think about those years a
lot. Every now and then I go back there. The cobble stone are paved over and
the factory is closed and the river runs a little cleaner these days but
otherwise it’s all the same. Vast herds
of poor kids run the streets in second hand clothes. The poverty is still
there, so I asked God, I said “Hey, God, why
don’t you do something about this?” and God said “I did, I brought it to your
attention”
