Happy
I have been tagged in a happiness meme (and I have also won a surprise – yay!). You can read Ally’s definitions of happiness in her post, and I do agree that “happy” suffers from a good deal of overuse, that pursuing “whatever makes you happy” is a faulty and ultimately unsatisfactory way to live and that there’s a difference between circumstantial happiness and joy. But, all that seriousness said, here are ten things that make me happy:
1. I am a child of God ... that I did nothing to deserve it and nothing will ever change it (I just had to steal this one off Ally).
2. The existence of these little people (my niece and nephew), with a yellow balloon.
3. Books arriving in the mail and then time to read them.
4. When I go upstairs at work to get a coffee from the machine (we have these new automatic coffee machines that are pretty good, or good enough for me, but for some reason our floor doesn’t get one) and there is no-one else in the kitchen or wanting to use it, so I can fiddle about and change the milk over to “lite” and then push buttons as many times as I like to fill my cup to the brim, without feeling harassed by people lining up behind me.
5. A poem that says just the thing ... such that I go, ahh, yes, you know how it is.
6. The magnolia trees in blossom (sort of stole that from Ally too) plus the great big fig trees in our street that meet in the middle and the glass wall looking out at them.
7. Those times when you get to sit and have a good one-to-one with someone about the personal and spiritual things that really count.
8. Music with a cello.
9. Saturday mornings, with a sleep in, followed by a run on a slightly overcast and breezy day (I don’t especially like running in still sunshine) - it's better after the run - and then nowhere one needs to be.
10. Being out in the country where I can see hills in the distance.