You don’t find happiness - you make it.
Happiness isn’t an object you misplace.
Happiness is an orientation.
Happiness is not a bio-chemical high or a genetic gift.
Happiness is the answer that comes when acceptance meets our question.
Happiness is not bestowed by the luck of the draw.
Happiness is the gift of an invitation in the worst of circumstances.
You don’t climb up to happiness.
You don’t strain to attain it.
You don’t scale your sorrows to reach heights where hearts are untouched by grief.
Happiness is a river, its source the place where you surrender.
In the midst of our mourning, happiness is remarkably faithful, kissing our days with sunshine, with the laughter of an oblivious child, the whistle of birds that have not lost their hope and the smell of fresh bread.
Happiness makes you a pot of loose leaf tea and serves it in a delicate china cup, as if to remind you of the beauty of breakable things. Happiness nudges you to put on the dress you have been saving for a special occasion and says “yes!” to the inexplicable urge to wear high heels in the house.
Happiness is the soil that stays under your fingernails when you’ve spent the afternoon in the garden. Happiness is the hallelujah of a hot bath. It relishes a walk in the rain and smiles silently at the night sky in wonder at the scale of our problems.
Happiness decides that it is finally time to light that ornamental candle and to use the silver-plated cutlery.
Happiness is the kind hands that patiently hold our sorrows to the sun, trusting that its warmth will eventually reach down and take our tears, like the mist of an evaporated memory.
Happiness inscribes on the walls of our hearts, “I was here”, so that when we look back, we will know that we were never alone.