Happiness Arrives

A few days ago at the end of the day, I plopped down on my living room couch—the one from which I can look out the window and see the freshly leafed-out Japanese maple and the wide-spreading oak—and, instead of opening the book in my hand, I dropped it into my lap and, leaning back against a cushion, I thought, I am happy.

That happens sometimes: an unexpected flood of happiness. Not happy like I won the lottery, not happy because the bite I had examined by the doctor turned out not to be a tick bite or because my grandson just graduated from college. No particular life event precipitated this happiness. It simply arrived, a surprising and encompassing happy feeling moving through my body/mind /spirit like a soothing wave. I noticed it that day and it made me smile.

 Noticing when we are happy is key. Sometimes we are too busy to notice and so we scarcely feel it; we don't allow it to run deep. We miss out in giving our hearts and minds that grace-filled, gratuitous pleasure.

These are moments to take note of, moments to record in memory and store up, much in the way that a squirrel stores nuts against the cold winter. Life offers us plenty of unexpected difficult times. My habit, like the squirrel’s, is to have banked every gift of serendipitous happiness, times remembered that have filled me with gratitude simply  for life itself.

I hope you will try this. I think you’ll like it.