True Happiness

By Tim Hayakawa

I go to work each day I go
To earn some pay to buy my way
To buy my way in some small way
To meager measures of success —
Success that comes and goes through time
One day here and gone the next
To someone else whose time has come
A sudden change and who knows why?
Chance, karma? Good works? Or God?

He smiles and says, “It’s about time!”

We wonder at the world so bad
Yet filled with good we struggle with
Injustice, harm, and need and greed.
Why must we hate and kill and rage
For naught that’s worth it: strife and pride,
Wealth and envy, uncaring?

Villains all: their looks, beliefs
Cultures, speech, diversity
Which integrated becomes strength,
A helpful hand, life’s true wealth.

How live we then a life so dear
That heedless speeds by joys and fears
To future ever demanding
Wanting, hungry, insistent
To take it all: our hopes our lives
Dreams and hopes, our thoughts and loves?
What meaning can we take from then
Our works, gestures, intentions, lives
That will be gone as us ere long
Forgotten, lost, misplaced by time?

Looking back from future near
I see my lasting legacy:
Assorted photos, engraved plaque
hodgepodge words, records intact.
Countless others of these same
I see in vaults — commingled names.
Is this all I lived for then,
A few grains more of endless sand?

I go to work each day I go
To earn some pay to find a way
To live a life with meaning more
Than had before been apt to sway
My heart’s desires, cold and gray.
The present is all that can be
For future never comes to thee
It’s never here now, real and free
To give to others totally
So in the moment lost to self
Is where I’ll find true happiness.

Tim Hayakawa is an accountant who blogs at familymattersinhawaii.blogspot.com.

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