Happiness. It is what humans strive for on some level or another~ happy, happy, happy. Everyone has their own definition of what happiness means to them but when it is cracked open and pulled apart happiness is like nailing Jello to a tree. The definition of happiness shifts and reshapes over time depending on where you are in your life. When my children were small happiness to me was watching them sleep with their perfect little angelic slumbering faces. That can not be bottled, folks. When I was young around the age of eleven or twelve writing in a journal my youthful musings/poetry of life while sitting on my grandma’s porch swing was happiness. Happiness stretches, happiness shifts, and happiness is memories. This memory of my Grandma’s swing is a fond one because she is no longer with us.

What I realized today as I contemplated the word of Happiness for myself seems to be is writing, simply put, words on a screen or pen to paper. Unhappiness for me is not writing the stories of the people that live in my daydreams. For those of you that do not feel the need to write, you will think I have lost my mind. Even in my math classes as a young girl I still remember the personalities I would assign to numbers. Yes, I said numbers, example 7 and 8 dated, as in they went to the movies, on a date, in my crazy daydreams. These two numbers would be happy when they wound up next to one another in the answer when I had to do a trying multiplication problem. I could go on but why make you think I am more crazy than you already do 🙂 My brain works in story patterns, it is who I am, and happiness comes to me when I get to put these ideas on paper and share them with others.

Happiness also comes to me when I have my husband and boys at home, house tidy, and no alarm that has to be set for the next day. My nieces and nephews bring me joy and getting to sit across from my Grandma N., uninterrupted and listening to her memories brings such contentment.

What brings me happiness isn’t stuff, I don’t ever see that changing. I am not saying that a cute pair of shoes don’t feel good, but for me, shoes are not happiness. Shoes might bring someone else happiness and that is fine if that is how they are hardwired.

On a side note, there is a ton of melancholy out there amongst writers of the 17th and 18th century about happiness. I thought I would quote some famous poet or writer about happiness and most of the quotes I found had something to do with only finding happiness in other people’s failures. If this is you~ seek help..no seriously, you are messed up. All I can imagine about the writers in these eras is that they had no electric, no refrigerated food, plagues, very few had indoor plumbing, and hair products had to me mediocre at best~~~Imma guess’n. I say that I don’t need material things to be happy but if you took these things away from me I might be cranky, too and I would not be frizz free. No, there is no *might be cranky* about it. I would be. No doubt. This could have resulted in their melancholy on happiness.

What makes you happy? What defines your happiness? Have you really thought about this question? You probably have a list of things that don’t make you happy but do you have a list of what makes you happy? Take a few minutes and think about what your happiness is… More times than not, whatever you liked to do as a kid perhaps fishing, riding bikes, building with Legos or Lincoln Logs, playing house, drawing, baseball, or writing like I did, it is probably safe to say you like doing something of the same nature as an adult. Perhaps if you think about this you will find you actually apply this childhood skill to your adult job. My husband liked to ride bicycles ALL OVER TOWN as a kid and now he rides motorcycles when he can fit it in his schedule, even though he doesn’t do this at his job, he still enjoys doing this in his spare time.

So I ask you, what was your *happiness* as a child? Could you do something similar as an adult or perhaps you already do…