Day 12: Happiness is a roller coaster

I love roller coasters.  I think I became a resident of Florida primarily for the year long pass to the amusements parks (it's really cheap for residents!!!)  Roller coasters are thrilling, scary, and they make you hold your breath.  They are also loud, disorienting, and short lived. In order to experience this moment of excitement, you have to wait on long lines with lots of other hopeful people for the 90 second thrill.  These are also great descriptions of happiness...


Happiness for me is becoming a regular occurrence and I am starting to get the feel of why I am beginning to recognize my happiness where I did not before. Using the roller coaster analogy as my guide, I figure there are two kinds of happiness that people refer to:


1.  the incident of happiness; a brief occurrence, a moment in time; an event
2.  the ideal of happiness; a reflection of several strings of happiness pearls strung together.


I am striving for #2 because I think that is the way to go. Happiness is more of a reflective quality; a remembrance: meeting my best friend for the first time on the second floor of our college dorm; knowing I was  pregnant after returning from New Orleans; giving birth to my most  wonderful son; my first teaching job; my first principalship; meeting Joe; falling in love with Joe; returning to NYC after 35 years.  These memory pearls are all wonderful examples of reasons to break out into a large, warm smile.  You know the kind that lasts for more than just a brief minute, the ones that actually warm you all the way down.


On roller coasters, they have those automatic cameras that take your picture around the last and most harrowing turn.  You can buy them if you want when you're leaving the ride.  I buy them because I am actually smiling and enjoying myself.  Some people buy them because they or their friends look terrified and it's seems like it's fun to tease them or perhaps  it is a moment in time that they just want to capture. 


I have a picture of my most wonderful moments in my mental album.  Like all albums, they are brought out once in a while to show yourself or visiting friends and relatives those special moments.  I now understand that I need and am able to recall these images any time I want and that makes me really happy. So folks,  pull out your memory albums and look at them; what are you waiting for?