Happiness is that full heart feeling. You know, when your joy tank overflows and the flutters in your heart meet the butterflies in your stomach, and unable to contain the buildup of pressure, it explodes... leaving behind big grins with white teeth and tightened eyes with their adjacent approving wrinkles? I feel that. Sometimes. Not as often as I desire. However, when I do, it's because I am experiencing God: The beauty, the grace, the healing, the omnipotence. It happens when there’s hearing, even when no words are spoken. When Sarah and Ella and Dinah hit just the right note that makes the emotions I tried so hard to subdue, break free, and then my spirit feels a warming sensation that reminds me that I am alive, that’s happiness.
While those occurrences may seem grand, even moments which most ignore, also make me happy. The times when I walk into my mother’s house and it smells like my granny’s. When the last bite of food is perfection. Sometimes it's dragonflies chasing each other in the endless sky or an old couple caring for one another when they cross the street; watching people live authentically, experiencing mundane and tactile things in a new way, like they are doing so for the first time. Most times, my happiness actually arises from reasons apart from me; witnessing someone getting joy out of something, like opening a gift with no idea of what's inside and after peeling away the layers of paper and tissue and cellophane, discovering that ‘they actually were listening’, those are the times when I am happy.