The Happiness Factor

The teacher of Incomparable Wisdom showed his servant how the peasants around the countryside sowed and harvested their crops in season. The manservant said the grains knew what soil suited them best.
“See those rocks, master? Crops avoided them. Didn’t they?” The teacher asked his man to look closely. The manservant inspected the huge boulder and expressed his amazement. The surface was indeed mottled with lichens of many hues. “How come lichens knew what the crops didn’t know? He asked his master.
“Crops share a secret with soil; so would lichens with rocks,” observed the incomparable teacher.
At that time an eagle hovered above. It dropped a tortoise on the rock below. The force was such the tortoise broke apart and the eagle zoomed instantly to its supper.
A fox from one of the hidden crevices appeared to finish
off whatever was left of the supper. “ Here is a secret that draws eagle and a fox equally,” continued the master, “ those shells are not there by an accident. A secret.”
“What secret?”
“Every pebble and thorn in a rosebush thing has its place. Even this carapace shall find its own level in the scheme of things.”
Later they sat under an old cypress tree and the teacher drank the barley wine and said, “ The whole universe is singing as evening stars appear; isn’t that reason to join in their happiness?”
Happiness is a plumbline every living or non-living keeps with Life. It isn’t your mental or emotional state at any given hour of the day.
benny