My sister and I always pontificate about my mom's issues with being happy. Without going into too much detail, I'll just say that my mom has this martyrdom thing going, where she seems to intentionally sabotage herself so that she has an excuse to be unhappy about everything. I think in the end she has this religious belief that we're not put on this earth to be happy, we're put on this earth to toil and eventually reap our reward in the afterlife. She is constantly sacrificing for no real reason, and sort of looks down on people who follow their hearts rather than keeping up the status quo, and I really believe that it stems from her religion. My sister and I were just talking about it recently, and then I read this amazing paragraph in "The Brothers Karamazov" which I'm reading right now, where a revered elder monk says, "If I seem happy to you...you could never say anything that would please me more. For men are made for happiness, and anyone who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.' All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy."

While on the topic of religion, I must confess that, while I don't go to church, I am a bit alarmed by atheists. When someone tells me they don't believe in God, I feel so sorry for them, because it must be a very frightening thing to feel like we're all here randomly with no cause or purpose, and there's no greater force at work. Like I said, I've never been a churchgoer, I've certainly "sinned" quite a bit in my life, and I think the Bible is probably quite a bit of mumbo jumbo, but in general I'm pretty confident in my relationship with God, and while I do question all of the horrible things that happen on this earth, it's never really made me consider the alternative. I'm a reasonably intelligent and very logical person, but I just don't understand how people really believe that everything we have today is the result of completely random chemical processes. After all, the laws of the universe would probably have to have a lawmaker in the first place, wouldn't they?