I was a little girl working on my math homework, my favorite neon green mechanical pencil perched behind one little ear. The fan oscillated lazily in the background, swirling warm air around the living room. My brows furrowed in concentration, I was oblivious to the heat. I read the question several times over and found a way to approach it.
“Ah ha!” I muttered, then reached into my pencil case for my trusty pencil — it wasn’t there. I looked everywhere for it and couldn’t find it.
No! I could feel the solution slipping away from me!
Exasperated, I sat back down and reflexively tucked my hair behind my ear… and found my pencil.
Lately, I’ve been thinking that’s exactly how the search for happiness works.
Remember when we were kids and didn’t know a thing about the world? We could laugh at the simplest things — knock-knock jokes, raspberries on bellies, Tom getting his ass kicked by Jerry. We would smash toys together, skip rocks over and over and call it a good time. We sure as hell knew how to be happy!
Then things got complicated. Life became a series of “getting”, there wasn’t much time left for living.
