“Boy, what a beautiful spring day,” I said to myself as I stepped from the crack house at dawn and began my daily walk for the $ and drug of my choice. A few minutes later, even though my clothes were dirty and I had holes in the bottoms of my shoes the size of a golf ball, I’m all right. At least its not raining so I can walk down the road with dry feet and an unsung song in my heart.

My life was in shambles. I knew the hopeless futility every crack whore knows. It’s all about dope and fuck everyone and everything else. I’d lost it all already, two bueatiful children, land, home, and a husband. Many’s the time that I just wanted to die but, today that’s not the case because a chance moment of happiness has taught me the meaning of ‘true joy.’

As I continue my walk, still broke, still hungry and dirty, and still craving a hit of crack, I begin to walk past these beautiful wild jasmine bushes. As I pass them I must stop and pick one of the fragrant vines them as I go along my way. 1,2,3 boy don’t these things smell sweet. 4,5,6 I wonder how long they’ve been here? 9,10,11 these flowers are just awesome. 15,16,17 I wonder how many people pass this way everyday and never notice these glorious wild flowers? 19, 20, 21 twenty-one glorious sweet smelling, wild jasmine bushes growing on the side of the road.

That day I discovered something, the difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is something that happens to you. Like when you find a quarter on the ground. You pick it up, put it in your pocket, and smile. It has made you happy.

Joy is something that you experience regardless of what happened to you. In my darkest hour, homeless, alcoholic, and selling my body for crack cocaine I realized the simple pleasure of seeing, smelling, and picking those wild jasmine flowers. Joy lives within us; it doesn’t come from what’s happening around us. Happiness is a fleeting glimpse, a temporal condition that depends upon the flesh. Joy is spiritual and is based upon the condition of our heart. So, no matter what my situation is today, I must choose joy because of the wild jasmine.

Post Script
On 118th street between Seaboard Ave and Blanding Blvd in Jacksonville, Florida there’s a stretch of road that many like myself have walked but few have noticed the beauty. Word from home is that the jasmines gone now, torn up by builders and they that’s progress.

This as true story of a day ‘in the life’ and I realize now how I must’ve looked back then. A tattered beauty, dirty clothes, and holey shoes waling down the ho stroll carrying this huge bouquet of wild flowers. In retrospect I wouldn’t go back now and change one damn thing.