Deep Thoughts: Happiness is ...finding your skate key

So - last week Authorblog asked - what makes you happy? Interesting, complicated question that. I read that post and dismissed it but it's been plucking at the back of my head. Like a tiny tenacious chicken on my shoulder. My knee jerk reactions were pretty simple - Tom Waits and a good bourbon, board game night, a great road trip, a well-executed event, some good lovin' - you get the drift - easy answers - technically all things that I enjoy - but are they the things that make me happy?

What's been interesting to learn the longer I rolled this one around in my head is that what makes me happy, is a day, an hour, a moment - of contentment. This is steeped in irony as "contentedness" is actually on the "Miscellaneous List of Things that I Hate" (yeah - that really exists.) There is a very fine line between the two. Contentedness, as I know it, implies long term settling, not moving forward, not risking growth. Conversely, a moment of contentment, is earned, at least for me. Having all of the other daily needs, cares, demons in your life and your head put to bed for a period of time, however brief and by whatever means. To use a spectacularly average cliche, a moment to really stop and smell the roses. The real happiness is not in Tom Waits and bourbon, but that you can take the time to wallow in it, good lovin' is great (YAY!) - but transcendent is the moment of lying in the arms of a man who is both your lover and trusted friend.

So - the happiness for me - is not only the great moment, but having earned the ability to relish while it lasts. Happiness, not so much a state of being, but something to be captured in the net.

We'll see what the chicken makes me do next.