The World is Beautiful

That's a line that my character says in my play...

I'm playing the Countess Aurelia, in Jean Giraudoux's The Madwoman of Chaillot...which, I am. The madwoman of chaillot, that is. We are..one and the same. Straightened out? Good.

As such, I am variably insane. [read: mad] At one point when a young man I just met tells me of a horrible plot, I reply a reply to the crowd surrounding me...a crowd of "vagabonds" whom I love dearly and who are as good as family...I say "The world is beautiful...it's happy. That's the way that God made it and no man can change it." To which the general reply is something along the lines of "if only you knew..."
If only you knew the terrible things going on, if only you knew about the smog and the death and the pidgins who don't fly. If only you knew that there are middle men and prospectors and corporations...
They mean to tell me all these things so that they can *burst my bubble*, if you will...let me in on the little secret that the world is not, in fact, beautiful.
As I said...I'm the madwoman. The characters, the cast, the director, and supposedly the audience, are all meant to believe that in being a madwoman...What I say about the world's beauty obviously holds no merit. I mean, it's ridiculous, right?
I say...
WRONG.
More backstory.

I got a text this evening from my younger friend Sam. She was [jokingly] distraught about all the sad endings and tragedies and ugliness in the books and movies she had recently encountered, and she said that these must just be her first complete dose of the real world...
This troubled me slightly. I've spent a great deal of time in my life wondering about the world's respective ugliness or beauty...When an old friend of mine died a few months ago and the news that I saw every morning proved to be too much, too horrible and ugly...I desperately started asking everyone for little pieces of beauty. I wanted to know what they found in this world to make it all worthwhile, to make it wonderful, to make it happy. I was pleasantly surprised at how many people could respond to that, and at the things they came up with. Since then I've given the subject great thought. I realized tonight, when Sam sent me that text, as I have briefly realized a few times in the past couple months, that I generally look at the world a bit differently than I used to. I go looking for beauty.

I sent a text back saying that if you're not careful, the real world looks like it's a tragedy. It looks like it's bitterness and ugliness and unhappy endings...you just have to know how to look at it to see true beauty. There is no true sad ending. There is no true tragedy...the world is beautiful, as my character says. Surely, it is a flawed beauty, but it is there. It's all that's ever there, even if it's only the beauty of progression.

People used to tell me, when I was sad, that I had to act happy even though I wasn't. "Act happy til you are happy," the saying goes...I detest that saying and I find it utterly false, and even harmful. Repression gets you nowhere.
I find...that one does not have to act happy, when they're not happy.
One has to BE happy.
To clarify that, I'll quote a very good friend of mine, White. She once told me that Sadness is not a destination....it is an expected pitstop. One that your friends might want to take with you...let them.

Sadness is expected and it is natural and it is healthy...but without due cause, to drag on sadness does nothing but harm you, and all those around you. It's exhausting. When many people realize this truth, they decide that they'll play the hero....they'll fake smile around their friends and they'll act hyper and they'll...essentially go over the top to prove just how *happy* they are...When they're not at all. It doesn't work, it hurts everyone.

So, knowing all this...I submit, again...
Don't act happy. Be happy. You don't have to walk around grinning all the time...but if you can actively look through life for things that just make you feel contented...a new leaf on a tree, your adorable niece with a faucet for a mouth, a child learning to talk, to share, to laugh...to use sarcasm. =] Friends, and growth, and the way the sunshine lights up someone's face. The sound of laughter and wind and rain and waves....There are so many beautiful things in this world...the ones that God meant for us to have. Let us not allow them to be tainted by the evils of the devil, which are so much more alluring, so much more addicting...Sadness, is addicting.

The world is beautiful...it's happy. That's the way God made it...
And No Man can Change it.