Happiness
Peace, enough, and the small joys
The best day you had this year probably cost nothing and nobody took a photo of it.
This room is about that day. Where it came from, why you nearly missed it, and how to notice the next one while it is still happening.
Things are going well, and you have started looking over your shoulder. You know the feeling. The job came through, the person texted back, the scan was clear, and instead of enjoying it you are bracing. Waiting for the other shoe. Feeling slightly guilty, as if happiness were a bill that arrives later with interest. It is not a bill. The bracing is an old habit from a time when good news was usually followed by bad, and it has stayed on long after the job it was hired for ended. Nothing bad is caused by your being happy. If the shoe drops, it drops either way. The only thing the bracing does is eat the good part.
The best day you had last year was probably a Tuesday. Nothing happened on it. You remember it anyway: the light at the kitchen table, somebody's hand on your back, the ten minutes between finishing the work and starting the next thing. We are trained to wait for the big days. The promotion, the trip, the proposal. They are rare, they are expensive, and they are often slightly disappointing, because you spent so long imagining them. Tuesdays are every week. Hot coffee. A text from someone who was thinking of you. The right song coming on in the shop. Lower the bar for what counts as a good day and notice how often you are already having one.
I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer.
I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'
Happiness is what's there when you remove the sense that something is missing in your life.
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day.
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
Smile, breathe, and go slowly.
The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.
A calm mind, a fit body, a house full of love. These things cannot be bought. They must be earned.
Peace is happiness at rest. Happiness is peace in motion.
The three big ones in life are wealth, health, and happiness. We pursue them in that order, but their importance is reverse.
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.