You So Happy

You giggle like a merry child when soap bubbles brush against your cheeks. You look up at the sky—so grey and ominous—and smile as if it were the most awe-inspiring sight you’d ever seen. Your conversations are full of rapture, your eyes full of dreams.

It isn’t that you are particularly young—at least not the young and oblivious they talk about in classic books. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say you were old enough to have experienced loss—of friends and friendship, ambitions, perhaps a parent. Your fluffy yellow sweater with the polar bear imprint doesn’t fit you anymore. I can’t believe that you escape ubiquitous villains in daily life—a tyrant boss, an obsessive ex-lover, or at least a street that gets jam-packed with traffic exactly when you’re in a rush.

Tell me: Don’t you stare at the fan on some nights, unable to sleep, waiting for the crickets to shut up already and the sun to rise? What about that gnawing feeling of the inevitable passage of time, made even more painful because, on rough days, time seems to have irritatingly stopped?

I am sure these things happen to you. No one is insulated from the vicissitudes of life. And yet, when I see you in shopping malls, clicking pictures with your girlfriends, you seem happy. Content. I see you pet stray dogs, outstretch your arms to feel raindrops on your bare skin, admire your new dress without worrying that it makes you look plump. You live in the moment, not fretting in anxiety about the morrow that may not even come.

You both mesmerise and confuse me. I want to be as happy you are, happy although my life is far from perfect. When I look at you, I believe that happiness is a possibility, not an illusory concept propagated by saints and authors of self-help books.

“I am happy,” you seem to tell me, “but no one has gifted me happiness on a platter.”

“Then how are you happy?”

“I just am,” your eyes respond.

I guess I have a lot to learn from you.

Picture: https://weheartit.com

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I am taking up the April #AtoZChallenge 2019 and will post every day of the month, except Sundays. I look forward to your company!

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