Attempting to Describe Happiness (Also Inadvertently Including Promotion of Cute Animal Videos)
Sometimes the world makes me sad.
Sometimes I try to feel too much, try to maneuver my heart to beat in sync with 7.125 billion other hearts, but the strings just get too tangled.
Sometimes the world makes me sad.
And yet–
something keeps my toes hugging clouds and my laugh bounding forth from crescent lips:
happiness
comprises an infinite number of tiny moments. Here, in attempting to list them, I shall undoubtedly neglect quite a few:
crunching leaves sprinkled pathway under a ceiling of amber treetops
sun’s gentle rays caress my face
I love myself.
I am so–
draw a smile from a friend’s trembling lips
engulfed in my parents’ sturdy embrace, the smell of merino wool and Neutrogena hair cream
PROUD that “pathetic nerd” has become an adjective I embrace, thank you for offering such useful tips on how to be a cooler person but your words slip through my skin like cold whispers, I don’t need you to tell me who I am; I know, and I like it.
So–
squirrel scampers across telephone wire, fat acorn bulging cheeks
sidestep a baby duckling waddling after her mother
GRATEFUL that I cannot help but put in 100 percent, cannot help but give my absolute best, cannot help but relish that sense of accomplishment that bathes me upon completion.
So–
open, eager ears to the intricate twinkles of a Chopin nocturne
press the keys and allow Harmony’s exquisite blanket to saturate my veins
CONTENT when silly things stop the sadness and draw the slumbering laughter from my belly, silly things like those videos–you know we all watch them–of adorable corgi puppies or carrot-munching bunnies that render my giggles incapacitating.
So–
immersed in a novel, in seductive sentences, simultaneously attached and un–
tossing ripe, teeming words onto a blank page, words squeezed from my own mind
THRILLED when I envision the years yawning ahead:
writing
playing
stories
music
articles on issues that mean something
sharing the passions that bubble under my skin
peddling to Parisian bakeries on those bicycles with the baskets
engaging with the people of the world, touching different-colored hands hearts
finding a way to effect change in soft human souls
(yes, I am optimistic)
loving
laughing
being.
Sometimes the world makes me sad.
But these, all these things sewn together into an
incessant
gloriously bizarre
quilt-like
pillow of experience,
make me happy.