It’s incredibly magical how, as we become older, our definitions and perspectives broaden and deepen. As I approach my mid-30s, I’m contemplating a lot about fulfillment and what it means to be happy and content. Perhaps my grandson will read these sentences when he gets older, God willing, and Netta could read them when I am not around in this short world.Perhaps the most difficult times in your life teach you a new definition of happiness. Perhaps in such seasons, the things you live for, the things you cherish most, look so tiny in comparison to what you were filling your spirit with before, so quiet in comparison. Perhaps it is at such times that your eyes are opened, that you learn to discover pleasure, calm, and safety in things you didn’t see before.
Perhaps happiness alters throughout the seasons of life when your heart hurts or grief has made a home inside you. Perhaps it is the way the light interacts with the trees in your favorite park; perhaps it is the way the sky appears at your favorite time of night, the way the moon fills the air with an energy you can feel in your bones when you really sit with yourself and let your isolation to wash over you. Perhaps it is the beauty you feel when you see your friends’ or loved one’s smiles, when you embrace them for twenty minutes straight, when you sit in quiet with them and feel so understood, and so seen, in all that you are.
