HAPPINESS
January 12, 2014
Happiness is a chasing of the wind
Spector like, a ghost of many dispositions
Chasing the vapor trail of a jet with your eyes
across the Michigan winter
Happiness is a five year old girl if you’re a
five year old boy
who doesn’t yet know why, but knows there is something
different,something intriguing, something mysterious
Happiness seems like balloons and birthday cakes
and streamers and ribbons
But sometimes happiness is a familiar blanket and
a football game
A remembered scent or taste, your favorite coffee cup
Happiness is the first day of vacation and often the last
The first day the kids are home and the first they are back to school
It is the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny
Santa and Jesus intermingled in December,
beautiful poinsettias in an emergency room or nursing home
the contrast, the irony
It is a tail wag and a furry ball, it is a reunion at terminal 5 and
a rekindled love affair
It is graduation day and the first day of kindergarden
It is your loved one arriving home after a 12 hour shift
A sale on your favorite perfume
It is opening day and World Series, box seats and bleachers
Sunny, surprising days in March and October
A January thaw, a car wash
Happiness is a snow day and a first crush reciprocated
The best house on the block Halloween night and a home
cooked breakfast.
Happiness is so many things
It is a new pair of boots and a broken in slipper
Drivers permit and renewing your license at 85
Being able to remember my great grandmothers lemon cake
40 years later as if yesterday, with the orange frosting and her bone china
teacups.
My great grandfathers Irish brogue and his plain green tattoos
It is watching the people I grew up become grandparents and gracefully age
and do and say the things that they never thought they’d say
It is all those things and more, but it has a dark side
It is a slippery eel and an unfaithful wench
People spend lifetimes chasing it only to have it elude them
they look for it at the bottom of a bottle and beneath the sheets of
a cheap hotel bed
The seek it in strangers and pills and in dark alleys
But it is a tricky lover
And what I’ve learned and what I now realize
Is that happiness is not found anywhere
except inside your mind
It is a state of mind, a way of being.
People can’t make you happy
only enhance your happiness.
All of these things I’ve mentioned can make a happy person smile
But will not phase the person without happiness in their soul.
Gratitude and thankfulness pave the road to a happy soul
Appreciation and humility provide the road markers
A clear conscience is the vehicle
A smile the headlights to show the world you’re here
It is said some people light up a room when they walk in and
others light up a room when they leave
Who will you choose to be? The choice should be easy