This is Deputy Digby Pancake. Life is intense. Especially when you love life as much as I do. When the sun shines, I shine. I feel all the sunshiney!

When it’s cold outside, I’m happy for the change and I’m happy to cuddle. I love to cuddle!

When I’m tired from a long hike, or a long day, maybe I’m feeling slow. But it’s a good tired. A good slow. Maybe I’m feeling beat. But I’m not feeling beet.

Girl Person is intense too. But not in the ways she would like to be. When she’s hungry, she’s real hungry.

When she’s beat, she’s beat. And so this weekend, the persons did everything that they could to cheer up. And so they went into a candy store.

Now, when most people go into a candy store, they buy candy. But no. Leave it to Girl Person to buy beets. Yes. Pickled beets.

As she watched the candy persons make candy, she wondered. Should she buy those beets sitting all by themselves on the shelf? Should she buy those beets with all this candy available?

And as Boy Person looked at honey, she kept eyeing those pickled beets across the room. They were calling her name.

But even though they were calling her name, she kept hearing other things too.

She heard voices saying she didn’t need to splurge for this treat. That $6.99 could buy something more useful. The voices said that the pickled beets probably wouldn’t be that good anyways. Because who buys beets in a candy store? But when the nice candy person took a break from making pecan brittle and apple cider, she told Girl Person that she had pickled those beets. And that they were very good. Very good, indeed.

And that’s when Girl Person decided that she couldn’t make her feel bad. She would buy those beets. That jar of pickled beets.

You may not think that it was a big deal for Girl Person to buy the beets. But it was. Sometimes, being depressed can make you feel unworthy. That you shouldn’t be happy. And when she got home, she knew that she couldn’t wait for those pickled beets in the jar. She was hungry.

I’m not one to wait to eat. If the food is there, it’s gone. And so as I watched her open the jar, I knew it was a big step. She was opening the jar to happy. Hopefully. And I sure hoped they would be good.

It didn’t take too long for her to smile. And she declared they were the best pickled beets she had ever tasted! I secretly hoped she had listened to the beets and not the voices. Because everyone deserves to open a jar of pickled beets. I may not know how to do algebra. I may not know how to drive a car. I may not know how to write a check that my butt can’t cash, as Gandpa says. But I do know how to be happy.

If life has made you feel like you’ve failed or you’re not good enough to enjoy every day, I’m here to tell you that you are.

If a jar of pickled beets can be that good in a candy store, you can find happy around you too. You don’t have to have perfection to be happy. The good things are there. You don’t have to be perfect to be happy. You deserve a jar of pickled beets. Will you open it?

–Deputy Digby Pancake

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