This morning when I checked my email I had two poems about heaven there. I subscribe to a few poet’s blogs, to Poets.org’s Poem a Day, and to Rattle’s Daily Poem. I thought, out of all the sites I read and all the poet’s that write poems, it was interesting that two poems were about heaven on the same day. (Here and here.)  I’m not sure what heaven is, I’m not sure if it’s a real place or just something the faithful want to believe in and aspire to in order to  make their lives more bearable and purposeful. I can’t say it’s not a real place because I want to have an open mind about things that can’t be seen or proven as fact. This world is too mysterious to know for certain everything about it. The entire cosmos it too mysterious and far-reaching to know anything for certain. It’s an impossibility. Plus, I truly believe our brains are incapable of understanding or grasping many concepts including the possibility of a heaven or the possibility that deceased loved ones are not really deceased but are indeed existing on another plane, in another reality that we cannot fathom. I don’t know it to be true but I don’t know it to not be true.

I rarely think about heaven. Dictionary.com gives us several  definitions of heaven. The one I identify the most with is this:

6. a place or state of supreme happiness:

“She made his life a heaven on earth.”

“Supreme happiness” sounds great but it’s what makes heaven more of a utopian idea than a reality and it feels unattainable.  We can try to be happy but sometimes circumstances make it very difficult. Sometimes all we can strive for is chunks of happiness. A few  moments here, a day there. For me, heaven can happen in a few moments when it’s a beautiful day and I’m outside in it and it feels so glorious that I forget my worries and just bask. (I love the word “bask”.) Heaven can happen in the few moments of a hug when you really, really need it. Heaven can happen when your dog gives you a big, wet kiss because she loves you so much. Heaven can happen in the first seconds  a flavor you love spreads in your mouth. Heaven can definitely happen through music, whatever genre you enjoy.

So I’ll take my little chunks of heaven when they come along and not worry about what I have to do to live in Big Heaven after I die. What happens then will happen. I can’t be worried about it.