The Happiest Place on Earth

It's always bugged me to hear Disney's Magic Kingdom called "The Happiest Place on Earth" - as if happiness were something that could be conjured up with roller coasters and costumed characters. But when my mom and dad offered to organize a family trip to Orlando, I couldn't say no.

My daughter's 13 and lives in Montreal. My parents are well into their retirement way out on the West Coast, where my sister and her boyfriend also live. Time is fleeting and the future always uncertain, so any opportunity to get together is rare, and precious.

By some unspoken agreement we all treated this trip that way, and spent two weeks together in our own shared experience of what passes for paradise here on the planet.

We're not the perfect family - we squabble and irritate one another as much as any group of wildly different characters - but we are a family that values family, and knows enough by now to be grateful for our unbelievable blessings.

The latest blessing was this trip, a journey some of us had made once before,  in part, when my sister and I were little. We went back through some old memories and made a whole lot of new ones, drinking in every last drop of an experience we knew we'd likely never repeat.

We took a cruise. We swam with dolphins. We stuffed ourselves with seafood. We rode on rides and bought souvenirs and ate giant scoops of ice cream and all of that tourist stuff. I felt guilty for the indulgence, but that's my problem. All of that is a means to an end, and the end was simply being together.

So this is a picture of the gang of us in the Happiest Place on Earth. It happens to be Walt Disney World, but I hope and pray it could be anywhere, any place where we're together and grateful.

May every family find that place together. It's a magic kingdom indeed.

Why is this man smiling?

Working on this site requires me to spend a lot of time looking at pictures of myself. Understanding how I present myself to the world is part of what I do. I also talk about myself a lot; this is a diary, after all. As someone who is hoping one day to transcend the ego, I feel a certain tension about all this mirror- and navel-gazing. I'm also frequently chagrined by how much clutter I discover in the ongoing effort to clean up the dirty basement of my soul. But what makes it all worth while is that occasionally, I discover something in me that I really like.

Last summer, I saw a photograph of myself taken during the encore of my CD release at Hugh's Room. I was smiling so broadly I barely believed it was me when saw the picture (although the music note ball cap and Canadian flag t-shirt were pretty good evidence). I truly hadn't realized that my mouth could even stretch that wide. My face actually taught my brain a lesson.

Later, I saw another picture of me, taken in the backstage area at the Shelter Valley Folk Festival. My eyes were closed and I was listening to the live feed from the stage, captured brilliantly by my friend Michael Nunan. The look on my face in the picture was one of profound peace. I truly hadn't realized that my mind could even sit that still. Knowing that I was able to inhabit a friendly moment incidentally, gave me more confidence to inhabit difficult moments intentionally. That was a big step.

Recently, I saw a likeness of me with a big wide grin and an easy, happy confidence on stage at the Free Times Cafe. That picture somehow combined the peace of the Shelter Valley shot and the joy of the Hugh's Room shot. Again I was greatful for the gift of a photographic lesson. Why is this man smiling, I wondered?

He's smiling because he's happy.

Of course that opens another can of worms: who am I to be happy? I'm an undeserving sinner, an existential wretch, a lost soul on the human highway and all that. Whole villages are being wiped out and I have long hot showers whenever I want. I burn gasoline and electricity and fly all over the place in airplanes, and my little folk songs ain't exactly saving the world...

Still, I ask myself: if I can't be happy, with all my great good fortune, good health, and good luck... who could be? And so I feel that I must be, and I shall be, and I am.