The Happiness Project

[gnimmel]

I'm interested in happiness.
I mean, everyone is, I guess[1]. But I've been reading discussions like this, and this, and this. And I was thinking about the cheese and pickled onion sandwich.

The thing about the cheese and pickled onion sandwich is this: provided it is the right cheese and pickled onion sandwich (that is to say one with crispy

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[gnimmel]

Another specific memory: January 1998, when I lived at the top of a tower in Gonville & Caius College. I was very, very busy that year in all kinds of ways (umpiring the Assassins' Guild, singing as much G&S as I could get my hands on and anything else that came up, being in the third year of a degree course, Sheila and her Dog and so forth). But I remember that day as being rather lazy, in a slightly ritualised way. I read fiction (I was in the habit of regularly re-reading The Lord of the Rings at the time). I sat at my window and watched the glorious pale-gold sun of winter stream over central Cambridge. I'd just discovered Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, and I was listening to it on repeat, lying back on my bed in an island of calm sunlight and thinking yes, there is beauty in the world.

[ceb]

Fantasia is about the most beautiful thing ever!

[ashfae]

I went to summer camp as a kid; not something that exists out here, really, though from what I've gathered most Brits know the gist of it. The camp I went to was called Eagle's Nest, and it was way up in the Pisgah Forest, in the Appalacian Mountains. One day we were taken on a random hike; I'm sure I could wander the Pisgah Forest for years and not find the spot we ended up in. After a while we were let loose to run around (within reason) and explore. I found myself walking up a hill covered in small, small trees, I could've wrapped my hands around the trunks, possibly even just one hand. Very thin tall trees, but lovely, with a canopy of leaves above our heads so you couldn't see sky, just patches of light. I walked up the hill amongst them and then suddenly, I was at the top, my hand was above the canopy, I was standing on the hill and looking over the treetops. A sea of treetops, as though I were somehow hovering above the whole forest; nothing but treetops for miles, and me miraculously above them, but my feet were still on the

[ashfae]

Actually, here's another one. Chris and I had only been dating for a month or a bit more, and I was both smitten as all heck and somewhat wary because what in the hell did I know about dating or anything. It was late at night and we were waiting for my train and killing time in a rather loud bar, because it was warmer in there and we were thirsty. Couldn't hear a thing over the music. Chris was a little tipsy and I was glad to be off my feet and we were just moving from the painfully shy and awkward stage to being more comfortable with each other.

He started finger breakdancing to the music. I don't really know how to describe this; he pretended his fingers were breakdancing. It was incredibly silly. I hadn't known until that point that he could be silly, and my own tendency towards the absurd and whimsical was something I'd been trained over the years to hide during affairs of the heart (it could be shared with friends, but clearly was not compatible with romance). And this was the most amazing revelation, that love could be silly,

[elettaria]

Oh hell yes. ghost_of_a_flea and I are madly, outrageously, insanely silly together, and it is pure bliss. I never used to think that romance could be prancing about wearing nothing but a silly hat. That hat has meaning, I tell you. It's a very cheap version of one of those hats with earflaps (we later saw it being sold in Edinburgh Bargain Stores for £2.99) which a relative had given him for Christmas. He refused to try it on until I said, "I'm not looking at you until you put on the hat," at which point he came into the room wearing the hat and the most hunted expression I've ever seen. It was ghastly on him. However, we discovered that it's rather cute on me, and it turned into a running joke. If he needs cheering up, I'll put on The Hat and do a little dance. (I can't dance to save my life, I just stand there and wiggle, really.)

[shermarama]

I don't know if I'm thinking of the right sort of things but I can think of a few moments which have been made of nothing other than glee, about where I am and who I'm with and what we're doing, usually when I'm doing something that I know if I wrote it down would sound like a very strange thing to be doing. One was on a diving holiday in the Isles of Scilly last year. It was such a beautiful place generally, with masses of flowers and unusual succulents everywhere, and even more beautiful underwater, with walls covered in crazy neon jewel anenomes and seals coming and biting your fins. There is also basically no crime there; no-one uses bike locks, for example, because if you leave your bike somewhere, when you come back it will still be there. We'd got up and made our way to the boats for a morning dive and I realised I'd left my dive computer back at the house, which was about ten minutes' walk away, although longer in a drysuit, which tends to restrict your mobility a bit. Someone else on the trip had hired a bike, and said I

[sphyg]

Last November, after a good meal in a nice pub, looking at the lights.