Happiness meme: Day 8 (final day!)
Wow, I can't believe it's the last day of this meme already!
Sunday lunch at Jacqui's was as awesome as I hope it would be. Igby had a great time racing around the garden and playing ball with Fearghus. We all played cards and watched TV and chatted and drank wine and ate a lovely meal. After dinner, Feargus and I ran out to the trampoline and were jumping around for ages in the dark, giggling and screaming and spinning around and falling over and bouncing on our knees. It was the most infinite I've felt in a long time; I was really there, breathless, in that moment, and I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else.
When I came home, I sat with my brother and watched TV and chatted - in the end we were up until well past 2am. We watched a brilliant old David Attenborough documentary on reptiles which has ensured I will never view a frog in quite the same way again! (Seriously, laying eggs and having them sink into your back; letting a thick membrane grow over them and then having your multitude of babies push their way out THROUGH YOUR SKIN to be born?! Disturbing is not the word!) Anyway it was nice to spend some time with my bro, disconcerting reptilian reproductive habits notwithstanding.
So in summary, the past 8 days have spanned the happiness spectrum, from bleak gloom with no flicker of light on the horizon, through minor episodes of weak cheer, past interludes of quiet contentment and cautious optimism, right up to bursts of giddy delight and outright euphoria. What have I learnt from this? I guess there's a load of old clichés and platitudes about happiness always being there for those who are prepared to look for it, about not giving up hope, about fluctuation and how happiness can appear when you least expect it. But I suppose what I've really learnt is that I often don't pay enough attention to my life and its small-scale, everyday occurences. And I've become more aware of what does make me happy, where previously I might only have thought of what's holding me back from happiness. I suppose it's the recognition that happiness isn't some mythical castle up in the sky that's always going to be off-limits. That if I look hard enough, I will be able to find it in some form, no matter how tiny or fleeting, every day. And we're back to the old clichés again :) But I guess that often they really do spring from basic truths.