Still swishing this ‘happiness’ thing around within me……

After writing the other post I began to bring even more attention to the moments, thoughts and sensations that support, enhance or cultivate what I call ‘happiness’. As the ‘list’ grew I came to more clearly verbalize within me that it is not a thing, person or event that makes me happy per se…..the happiness or contentment I feel is as I described in my previous writing……a constant light and ‘pillar’.

And….. there are also those moments when it becomes more radiant and sensational…..

So I had an ongoing ‘list’ yesterday of these moments that stood out to me…..and I was having so much fun with it I thought I would share. It also made me wonder about other people’s ‘lists’……..what would your list have on it especially if it included all the small routine moments that bring satisfaction…..not just the ‘wow, beacon of light’ moments……

Here are some of my happiness supportive moments of the last 24 hrs……

~driving with the window down and a song I don’t know comes on the radio and there is a melody line that takes me in
~drinking goat milk from the jar
~driving and the traffic feels perfectly synchronized and everything is in flow
~sitting on the porch and improvising with my voice a song across the street to the trees
~reading an excerpt from Herman Hesse
~the smell of the apple as I am about to take a bite
~watching 2 teenagers sitting on a street bench talking
~talking with the cashier at the grocery store
~seeing the light on the mountain tips
~a moment in a song where I hear an instrument for a brief second and then it is perfectly gone
~witnessing an older couple walking together
~a street filled with kids shuffling in costumes and people sitting on their front porch with candies
~firelight
~a night of restless sleep
~homemade yogurt
~laughing with a ‘stranger’
~tenderly stroking the head of my sweetie
~the quiet of early morning

….it goes on and on……

I also wanted to share this excerpt from Herman Hesse’s “Wandering”……..

“A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.
So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts. Trees have long thoughts, long breathing and restful, just as they have longer lives than ours. They are wiser than we are, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.”