High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘Pleasures’

Delight breezes in the door all breathless and shaking her curls.  She plunks her basket of fresh-picked pleasures on the chair and waltzes over to kiss you on the cheek.

“Hello, Darling,” she sings.  Her eyes are bright and sparkling and she smells of honeysuckle.

No matter what you were doing, suddenly everything has changed.  You’re enchanted.  The light is more luminous, the sounds sweeter. The emotions running through your chest are rich and profound.

All you want is to be in this moment forever, breathing the unexpected pleasures of simply being alive, here, in this exquisite now.

So may it be for you.  So may it be.

Take time for some moments of ease in your life, some moments for letting cares go.  Few are the problems that will not wait, or benefit, from being forgotten for awhile.

Walk somewhere that you can see a tree, a flower, the broad expanse of sky.  Walk easily, as if all the time in the world was yours (for it is, you know, and you’re free to spend it as you will).

Sit on a patch of grass.  Rifle your hands through it and feel how alive it is.  Feel the soil beneath it, the stuff that gives birth to everything that sustains us.  Breathe the air; inhale its fragrances; feel its warmth.

Hear the world’s music.  The delicate rustling of leaves, the chirping of birds.  Pretend you’re a kid again: Cup your hands over your ears and roll them forward and back and listen to the sounds change and laugh at the miracle of hearing.

Look at the wondrous expanse of sky, its light veiling the cosmos.  Watch the heaped clouds, made of nothing but water, floating on the wind.

Study it all as if you were seeing it for the first time, or as if you had just been told that in two weeks you would be blind.  See the spectrum of hues and shades, the patches of light, of reflection, of shadow.  See the magnificent complexity of it all, the precision of its design—all purposeful, all pleasing.

Let it pour into you like warm honey.  Taste its sweetness.  Feel your connection to it, for this is your home.

The small pleasures, the moments of sweetness and ease, are balm for the soul.  Make time for them, and they will bring you healing and joy.

It’s become a sort of ritual for me to listen to the morning songs of the birds as I walk from the parking lot into my office.  It’s a familiar little gift of joy, given to color my day.

Once you begin to look for them, you discover little gifts of joy tucked everywhere, you know.  They come as little surprises—a glint of sunlight, a sudden swath of purple dancing across the landscape, an unexpected call or note from a friend, a fragrance wafting down the street, the wag of a dog’s tail.

They come as rewards for your willingness to take delight in life’s small and simple pleasures.  They come wrapped in whatever shape will zing little darts of joy your way.  They’re like little jewels, strewn across your path just to sparkle your day, to zap you into the moment and remind you that you’re alive, here, now, and intending to enjoy life’s pleasures.

Set your mind to looking for them, for noticing them when they appear.  Start a collection.  Make little lists, just for the fun of it.  See how many you can find.  See how many reappear, over and over, like a beloved friend come to soothe you and bring light to you day.

Somewhere in a back corner of your mind it’s good to keep a little bag of favorite distractions you can draw from when life pulls you down.  Toss into it random scraps of things you enjoy.

Think of places that soothe you and draw your interest —a library you like to visit, a street lined with shops whose windows hold treasures and delights, or where the architecture fascinates you.  A park, a garden, a meadow, a beach.

Think of activities that engage you—hobbies and pastimes, games, sports, arts.

Think of people who make you laugh or who tell amazing stories.  A kid maybe, a neighbor, a pal.

Toss ‘em all in your bag.  Then, when you find some dark train of thought has gained traction in your mind, you’ll have ways to dis-tract it right at hand.

Happy distractions are like mini-vacations for the mind.  They bring you little pleasures and healing.  They offer you nibbles of light and joy.  They take you away for awhile so you can remember a bigger you.  You’re refreshed and renewed when you come back to tackling your problem.  And sometimes when you come back, you find the problem has simply gone away.

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• Appreciate the beauty that surrounds you;
• Immerse yourself in excellent music; and
• Whenever possible, indulge in a slice of rich, chocolate cake.

Pleasure, after all, makes such a fine pathway for happiness to travel.

When you stop to think about it, isn’t it awesome that our senses bring us joy?  The taste of a ripe, juicy peach, the splendor of a sunrise, the coolness of water, the scent of a rose?

Oh, I know the strict materialists can argue that it all serves some utilitarian function evolved to aid us in survival.  But I’ll counter that joy serves that function, too.  It’s life’s pleasures, after all, that make it worth all the trouble of sticking around.

Simple pleasures – the touch of a loving hand, warm socks, the fragrance of freshly baked bread – are the poetry of life.  They soothe us and save us from monotony.

Think of the difference a favorite piece of music can make in your mood, how it plays on your emotions—invigorating, inspiring, comforting or empowering you.   In every culture on earth, we humans make music. We sing and whistle, we chant and hum, and we thump and pluck and strum and blow just for the exquisite joy of it.

Think of the simple sights that bring little slivers of happiness to your day—a play of color in a shop window, dew beaded on the morning grass, the halos around street lights when it rains, oil in a puddle.  It doesn’t take much.

And it didn’t have to be that way.  We probably could survive if the world was nothing but shades of gray and if all the birds sang the same tune.  But it isn’t, and they don’t.  And isn’t that grand?

I drove to work through a thick autumn fog, with the silhouettes of trees and telephone poles floating in and out of sight like ghosts in a dream.  Walking from the parking lot to my office, I noticed the quiet of the morning and realized, with a touch of sadness, that the songbirds have gone.  Now it will be only the hardiest species whose calls I will hear for the five long months of Pennsylvania’s winter—the cardinals, the jays, the brave little sparrows, the crows.

It was nearly noon before the fog burned away.  But when it did, the day was sparkling.  A large flock of Canadian geese flew past my window in the afternoon, heading South.

Wasn’t I just welcoming spring’s blossoms?  And here’s autumn already, shouting its arrival in bold splashes of crimson and gold.  The pleasures of the seasons are so fleeting, appearing and disappearing in a kaleidoscopic ribbon of fast-flowing time.

The trick is to call the moments of beauty out from each day, to hold them in your hands as if they were miracles.  For so they are.  And life is a never-ending flow of them.

Some wise soul once said that to be truly alive we should look at the world as if we were seeing it for the very first time—or for the last time.  Then we would be freshly astounded and wonderstuck by it, and by the incredible gift it is just to be here, in the midst of it.