“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” – John Lennon
I Discovered it was Everything and Nothing
In the midst of one of the most unhappy periods of my life, I realized I was a happy person. Not the delightful, delirious, delicious tickling of the inner self when all is right with the world, but the knowledge that a kind of happiness lived within me that no amount of outside sorrow could touch.
This pair of sandhill cranes made my birding passion happy. — Photo by Pat Bean
Although I struggled for weeks to get through the day, I still awoke each morning with a hope, verging on knowledge, that my days would get better. I also realized I still had a zest for life that made me glad to see and appreciate the sunrise and the little details of the day that so often go unnoticed, like the smile of a child or the tiny drop of dew on a yellow rose.
While lingering effects from that difficult period over 30 years ago still occasionally touch my life, and those of people I love, the happiness within, along with my zest for life, have not dulled. In fact, they have only grown.
I wonder sometimes if I’m singularly blessed, or if others also have an inner happiness that cannot be destroyed? As a writer, I’m always observing people, and I have come to a conclusion that while I’m not alone in having this trait, I might be among the minority.
I awake each day with gratefulness in my heart for being so blessed.
Bean’s Pat: I gotta pee http://tinyurl.com/coobdul As a person who tent-camped until she was 65 and bought her RV, Gypsy Lee, this was a blog that brought back many memories and had me laughing out loud.
Pat Bean's blog 
Those cranes are beautiful.
Thanks. I do so agree.
I, too, was a tent camper, Pat, but had to give it up when I could still get down on the ground but required a crane to get me up! LOL Not one of those sandhills but, well, you know. Like you, I was suprised to discover that even at my lowest I often had suspicions of happiness that lay below the surface angst. I even had a vision of it once, like seeing red hot magma flowing through a deep, deep crevice in the ground. I knew that was joy. I never thought of myself as a happy person but as an optimistic one. They’re closely related, though, aren’t they? Great post.
Thanks Sam. You are an inspiration to me in how you have dealt with a life that has certainly thrown you a nasty curved ball. And thanks for all you’re kind comments about my blog. They’re appreciated.
Pat, you are definitely among the minority. But it’s the most beautiful of minorities. I know how you feel… even in a period when I hated life and wanted to die I found joy in small things, and experienced that upwelling of belief in better days ahead. It kept me alive. The older I get the more I realize how different my perspective is than that of most people around me.
So, here’s to us happy people!! We are better off, for certain. 🙂
I think of it as being blessed, and try to be appreciative of the gift every day of my life. I’m glad you’re in the minority with me Evie.
Great post Pat. Of the 3 biggies; love, happiness, and security, I consider happiness to be primary. And it’s definitely an inside job. Love the John Lennon quote, I’ll probably be stealing that….
😀
Please feel free to steal the quote. I did. Happiness, I know from experience, helps you survive lack of the other two during difficut periods. Keep smiling Alex, and teaching me all about the universe.
You got it, Pat!
Dear Sis, after reading your blog, from the 19th, I believe I share your passion for inner peace and happiness. I uasually try to look for the positive and good in everything and everyone, even when they disappoint me.
The world is getting less and less to be a happy place, but we can be happy in spite of it.
Looking forward to seeing you sometime after April 1st. Please send me your phone # so we can call you when we get to Tuscon.
/Love, Robert and Deloris/
I’m glad to know that Robert. I do truly think it’s a gift. When are you coming to Arizona? I’m going to be gone April 3 to about the 12th. I’m driving Gypsy Lee to Utah for my friend Charlie’s retirement party.
That sense of inner happiness, peace, contentment, optimism is something I’ve come to learn gradually over life. For me, the hard times were something to survive day by day but always with hope for the future. I think surviving, especially surviving grief, helped me learn to value happiness and keep it within my soul. I only wish I could gift it to the younger people in the family who are still going through their own life struggles, but perhaps they will “learn” happiness all the better by coming to it themselves.