A Moment of Pure Happiness
It is kind of a paradox that as easy as life is nowadays for so many of us, these moments of simple, pure happiness do not occur more often.
When have you been the happiest?
Sure, if you are asked “when were you the happiest?” you can always refer to the birth of your first child––very hard to beat that as a metric for ultimate happiness––but it is a bit too easy an answer.
What I am talking about are the totally unexpected moments of pure joy. The moments when time ceases to exist. When you don’t think of anything, you just are taken by this feeling of combined emptiness and wholeness at the same time.
You are present there and then — and nothing else matters.
Like… when you are a kid you lie on grass and stare at the clouds––or lie on the pier on a lake, face down, and watch the small school of fish against the sand below you in the shallow water. Or when the day is over and you’ve been playing football with your friends and sun is setting and you are heading back home. Thirsty, tired, scratched knees, but not really worried about anything. Just good, plain tired.
But you grow up — and grow old I guess — and these feelings seem to grow rare and distant. Small moments, simple, fragile, so precious and yet, during a more than half a century of life lived, I can name only a few.
The first time I sailed a sailboat my dad had rigged for me of an old rowing boat — I must have been like twelve - was such a moment definitely. As was the moment I sailed my first real sailboat about a quarter of a century later.
Or the time I snowboarded on pristine powder for the first time — two meters of it––and was yelping like a little puppy gone totally insane.
I remember sitting on a kayak at sunrise once and a paddle tour with a canoe on a misty dawn on the river next to our house some time later. The last day of windsurfing in Stintino after a week of training years ago and another evening, recently, sitting on a surfboard at sunset in el Médano, just popping with the waves.
And then, all of a sudden it happens again. Unexpected. Sitting in a nice little beach cafe, one of the last days of the year… and watching the last surfer coming ashore — and going again for the next ride. Like an hour after I had gotten tired and cold and opted for a shower and a cafè leche y leche.
(Later I find out there is actually a word describing my feeling. It is called compersion.)
The last surfer on the waves is my daughter, born and raised above the 60° latitude North where surfing does not exist simply due to the elements: water is in solid form quite a many months of the year.
Yes, she has had her share with lots of the activities I do, but I have tried not to push them to her too much, trying to let her do her own choices, find her own path.
She has tried lots of things, including riding (ending in an IC-unit with a helicopter), skating for years almost daily, and nowadays she plays tennis four times a week, takes dance classes––combined with the fact that she is A-level student speaking four different languages.
What I am saying is that she is a great kid, someone a parent can only be really proud of. And I am, very much so.
But I have been worried, more often than not, that things are not right, that she is just performing to please others, to please parents, not really having dreams of her own nor having found her thing––and being as fragile as you ever can be at fourteen, very susceptible to the opinions of others, her own image, and all what that entails. Focusing way too much on the celebrity bullshit and trash on her cellphone instead of anything really tangible and concrete in her own life.
And there she goes. Back to the waves. Last surfer in. 14 years old and seems like she is discovering for the first time something of her own. Something that truly makes her happy.
And I am so lucky as joy just floats over me over the empty beach. All the way to the beachcafè where I am still nursing my leche y leche, not thinking about anything. Seeing her, totally oblivious of me.
Just watching her and feeling blessed I can share this moment this with her.
(I have started to write these musings and more personal pieces in MEDIUM lately.
My blog will go active again (soon/any day/one of these years) after this premeditated hiatus, focusing on teaching, future of the media, photography and visual storytelling –i.e. the more professional side of my life.
If you like my scribbles here, please give me a clap or two (or ten) below — see the hands-symbol? — it means a lot to me and it is really rewarding to see people really read — even appreciate what you are trying to say. Then again, if you consider it utter trash… don’t. )
