thoughts from behind the mower

My shoes began to break down while mowing yards.  On one, I even attempted to use that magical glue of the universe - duct tape.  But even that eventually gave way and the entire bottom of my right shoe fell off.

"You lost your sole (soul)," my dad quipped, quite amused with his pun.  So the rest of the day I walked uneven.  Every step was off center as I went up, down, up, down, up down.  And what surprised me most was my reaction.  I didn't get angry or frustrated.  First, I laughed.  Then it prompted me to begin to think about the mechanics of walking and why do we even wear shoes in the first place.  A year or two ago, I probably would not have reacted in such an even keeled manner.  It makes me wonder where I'm at in life.  The concept of "being happy" is not one in which I put much stock.  Happy is too fleeting; just one emotion among a broad spectrum of all that is life and nowhere near enough to encompass all that we experience as human beings.  Besides, enough has happened in my life the past year that would induce anything but happiness.  And at the end of the day, I'm just not a happy person.  But I do not necessarily feel the opposite of happy either.  No sense of despair (except before exams).  So how do I describe it?  It's clearly there.  I could see it in the way I reacted to losing my sole.  It's not merely a desire to make the best out of a bad situation.  Again, I'm anything but an optimist.  It's a deepness, a depth, an anchoring of emotions with the Self.  A discovery of soul, to pardon the pun.  For better or worse, that sense of center seems also to be just as fleeting sometimes as happiness.  And I guess that's the trick of life, to figure out how to deepen that sense of center and let go of the rest.  Happiness and sadness, joy and pain, they all come and go.  Holding to that depth, to that Self, to that soul.  Aye, there's the rub.