There are some moments in life in which a sudden self-awareness of happiness hits - a moment in which you step back from yourself and realize that, in that instant, everything is good. A feeling of your consciousness pulling away to make an emotional snapshot of that moment to care for and examine like one would a wounded bird or a nugget of gold.
While I don’t consider my life as a unhappy one, I only have a few of these moments guarded away. The first being at around age 6. My parents were giving me a group hug while we were all singing a family lullaby. My mother was expecting my baby brother at the time and that was the first time the baby’s name was included in the song. I remember feeling detached and floating away while taking in the moment.
The last time I experienced it I had just finished changing the sheets on a new king bed I splurged on after a small windfall. I remember laying on the bedspread and my 2yr old pup hopping on to play around the newly made bed. Instead of ushering him off as I usually did, I just watched him mess up the bedspread.
(I know happiness is not a fixed concept and everyone can have their own definition and experiences, but given my ignorance of the specific word to refer to the instant moment of self-awareness described, I just went with it)
Curious to read your thoughts and experiences.
I mean not the last time but as I look back over my life there is this point in time where my wife and I lived in the city in a neighborhood just out city center in a two flat. I worked at a research university and while the pay was low it had benefits and we could pay our monthly nut. It was 3 miles away and I could walk, bike, or take the bus. I would often walk in the morning and my wife would take the dog and there was this park about a mile or so away and we would have a little kiss goodbye and I would keep going to work while she walked the dog through the park and back home. We could spur of the moment grab food from close by places or any grocery item we wanted by walking. It was glorious. The lab I worked in was a research lab and interesting as heck on a day to day basis and collaborated globally. We had folks from japan practically every other summer doing research as well as many eurpean companies. Oh also my wife and I were barely in our thirties. it was sweet.