Is this as much to say as we’re not riding too high, we’re not on top of the world just now? Someone who was the button of Fortune’s Cap would be above all else, would be the cherry on the top of the Good Luck Sundae.

I’m reading QUIET right now and the button on Fortune’s Cap at the start of that book would seem to be Tony Robbins. He would seem to be the sort of person who might greet you and tell you how on top of the world he was, how great he was doing. He could not play Guildenstern, he could only play a king and not one of Shakespeare’s Kings either, he’d need too much vulnerability for that – no, he’d have to play a fairy tale king, a Disney King. We would seem to live in a world full of buttons sitting on Fortune’s cap, which is all well and good for the buttons but the buttons would not seem to be the most interesting parts of Fortune. We’ll get to those later.

I wouldn’t mind being over-happy. I don’t know what over-happy would feel like and I certainly wouldn’t feel happy to be not over-happy. I’ve seen people who seem over-happy but that’s about overdoing the appearance of happiness, not an abundance of happiness.

Happiness is a bit of a sticky wicket though. We seem to be always seeking it and almost never achieving it. I’ve read a lot of the happiness studies and many of them would seem to indicate that we know very little about how to be happy. Am I happy at the moment? Nope. Not even close. And even farther away from over-happy. I try to imagine what OVER-happiness would look like and I can’t even get a sense of it. Maybe it’s a cascading series of happy events? A ride down the hill of good fortune with so much speed it turns into an avalanche? I guess I wouldn’t want to be in an avalanche, even if it was made of happiness.

I know I thought about honor already. I can’t remember now but I think I was wondering what it means to be honorable in this day and age.

My grandfather’s obituary calls him honorable and when I read it, a light bulb went off. “Ah ha!” I thought, “That is who is honorable.”
He was an honorable human and while I might not have thought to call him honorable while he lived, now he’s gone, there is almost no better word.

But is honored the same as honorable? If I were to win a bunch of awards, you could call me honored, but I’m not sure that would necessarily qualify me as honorable. Particularly if I cheated like hell to get those honors.

Guildenstern got religion at some point in their childhood. He loved the ritual and structure of church and was often making pleas to heaven, head upturned, hands open in supplication. It got more pronounced in his teenage years and as he aged his religiosity grew.
He lived in a religious world so the people around him always had to nod, say “Amen” and thank him for his prayers – but not a small number of his peers wished he’d shut up about it already. He gave all credit to God and none to the people before him and this often grated on the nerves of the people around him.
When his buddy went out of his way to help move his stuff, sweated, lifted, carried, made it all go smoothly, Guildenstern gave all his gratitude and praise to God, while the man who’d cut his hand on Guildenstern’s desk, bled, thankless.
It was hard to argue with, though.
Certainly, by a neat trick of theology, he could credit everything to God. God made the man who helped him, therefore thanks were due to God. Sure.
Heaven had a lot to do in Guildenstern’s world. He kept it pretty busy.

Is giving up ourselves in the full bent a major full-on bow?
Is the full bent head to knees?
Or forehead to the floor?
Feels to me like the full bent might look a little like Child’s Pose, close to the floor, close to the self, at the feet of the sovereigns, almost kissing their toes.