Did you hear that?
What?
That sound.
What sound?
Perhaps it wasn’t a sound. Did you hear that absence of sound?
Are you drunk?
Ha! No. We just spent 20 minutes sitting here not saying a word.
Right. But I didn’t hear anything.
Yes, you did. You heard happiness.
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I often wonder if there will ever be a rule of measurement that I could use to calculate, with precision, every moment that carved its way there. Tracing the depths, I follow the path that hugs itself in merriment. For a moment, the briefest of it’s kind, I allow myself to fall into their grooves and feel their warm embrace, if at all possible, I could live there for eternity. The sound of a breathless chuckle, faint and heartbreakingly authentic, pulls me to awareness. Just in time to see those smiling green eyes, misted with just enough moisture to indicated pure pride, as he watches his children enjoying their own happiness. An infectious smile, stretching carelessly over his entire being asks the same from me, to which I always reply likewise. The ripple effect of happiness, it’s always catching.
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Happiness is a rogue September day lilly. It is a five year old signing “I love you” to Mom and Dad as she walks in to chapel on the day her class performs “What a Wonderful World.”
It is the arrival of your pizza to the table and one more beer. It is the smell of a new bicycle and the sound of it’s virgin tires gathering speed on pavement.
Happiness is putting on your jacket on the first cool evening of fall and finding a crumpled ten dollar bill in the pocket. Happiness is no cavities, donuts on Saturday, the last steps of a two mile run. Happiness is hearing, “You were right.”
It is a goal within reach. A Bulldog touchdown on a foreign campus, an airplane touchdown in a faraway city.
Mostly, I guess, it’s the little things, and taking the time to savor them.
take a leap