Well being is a Skill: Richard Davidson

Today I feel I've walked a thousand miles in the small period of three months. It seems to me everything is possible. This inner peace has been so hard to harvest and sustain. It starts one day when Wellbeing comes knocking and you suspiciously open the door. It wants to come in, it says. Is it the right apartment you ask? Are there any credentials that prove such anomaly, you seek... Abated, Wellbeing leaves and says it will come back some other day.

A few weeks later you're smiling cynically as you look out the window. "Ah-ha! I was so right! Crooked Wellbeing was lying!" Months pass. One night, really late you come to your apartment and see a note on the door: "I came looking for you but no luck, see you soon! Love, comma, Wellbeing."

A few days later you're hammering away, putting some framed art work on your walls and someone knocks. How inopportune this is, you think. Behind the door with suitcases and a plant, Wellbeing stands proudly. "I'm here, will try to do this for a longer period of time, shall we?"

Your brain slowly tries to process this comical situation you're in with one hammer on one hand and a nail in the other. Your hair is greasy and your bare soles of your feet are dirty. Yet you open the door stupefied, let it settle in but in a spare room. You state the rules and make it understand this is going to be a temporary arrangement, and that as soon as it needs to go somewhere you will to-tally understand, no feelings hurt.

For months you almost ignore it. You look at it incredulously as it chomps the food down, as it carelessly spills some wine on the carpet (it never cleans because it calls them Bacchus tears). You wonder how is it Wellbeing can live that way as you brush your teeth. It must be lying, you think.

Another month and it's behavior is driving you nuts. This is preposterous. "Why is there a digital camera on a pedestal for days and days in front of a decaying mango?" Wellbeing smiles. "Isn't life amazing?" Enough! you think. You pack your bags and leave for a month on a hazardous trip. In the middle of it you understand about resistance and the demand it places on your mind and body.

After that trip, you come home and one wall is painted blue. You are just about to argue but you bite your lip. You're too tired to talk. You let it have it's way for some time.

Co-habitation with Wellbeing is hard but you've come to like it. It cut your hair really short, it has changed some food habits and puts music everyday. It shows you every time your are about to honk everyone to death in an endless sea of waving cars, that there's a magnificent sunset to look at. Maybe it will become a long-time friend you now wonder. Why wasn't it here before? Some things would have been so much fun! It would have definitely shaped my love life way better, you asses.

It's OK, you think. On this grey, ordinary day, it's here (hopefully to stay). And that it's all that matters now.