"Happy" Is Just a Word

Happy is just  a word. Like any other adjective, article, gerund, moniker, or oxymoron, it's just an expression of clarity unless you get what it means. Really means. Lately, in conversations with my dear friend, Amy, I've noticed us touching on the finer points of aging. Although you might surmise we considered the highs and lows of sagging skin or widening wrinkles (since that's what women at large might highlight on the topic), you would be wrong. Instead, we comment on how the gray shades between easy blacks and whites seems ever-growing, reaching far beyond what we would have pictured just 10 years ago. We admit that what we deemed significant then seems microscopically small now, if it matters at all. We sweat the small stuff less, and confess that is the result in part of choice and in part of lessons learned via the force of life.

Still, we are softer. Perhaps gentler. Maybe a bit more relaxed. Definitely happier for it.

But if we're living for the big in life to make us happy, we'll not see the change age can bring, for I know this much to be true: happy is in the little as much as the big...maybe more so since the everyday little ways construct more of our lives than the juicy biggies like weddings, jobs, births, and deaths. Each day brings some reason to be happy though, granted, some days are harder than others.

A while back, we inherited a little book from friends called 14,000 things to be happy about. This one's a gem because it's nothing but a long list of reasons to be happy. Here's a sampling of my favorites from the book:

• straightening the pantry
• air so crisp and clear it draws you outside
• fish fry and beer on tap
• not minding the silences
• staying until the candle burns out
• swapping recipes over the backyard fence
• being forgiven
• writing a final sentence
• dinners that include a green salad and hot, buttered French bread
• shopping at garage sales
• living with the knowledge you've done your best
• praying for a sick child
• back doors: the ones best friends enter through
• the be-all end-all
• flopping in a hammock for a snooze before dinner

And here's some of my own:

• squeezing around the right guy on a motorcycle
• closing your eyes on the ferris wheel
• the silence of the house when you're home alone
• a porch swing, iced tea, and crickets chirping during the Iowa sunset
• walking the campus of your alma mater
• a margarita poolside on an ocean liner in the middle of the Pacific

Think of some of your own....maybe even write them down. Make a list of 14,000 of your own.

You may find they make you happy.