A Big Dollop of Happiness Please

The subject of happiness makes more money for publishers than you'd imagine and everyone seems to be in pursuit of this elusive commodity - happiness. We all want to capture a piece of it, like a lepidopterist chasing that rare and elusive butterfly, to then hold it hostage by caging it so everyone can see our uniquely newfound 'happiness'.

So what is this thing called happiness?

Is it really winning the Lotto and paying off your house and never having to stress about bills anymore? Or being able to travel anywhere you want to for the rest of your life?

Is it really hoping and wishing and praying that the man (or woman) of your dreams will kick down your door and rescue you, taking you back to his castle on a remote island surrounded by impressionistic fog (was this just my dream? I haven't patented it so please feel free to take copyright if you think this was originally your idea...).

So many workshops, so many courses - all bleating and braying the know-how to truly find happiness....how to tap into your spirituality for there lies the fountain of all things happiness related. It almost feels like the Amazing Race sometimes...... like we're all competing to find happiness before everyone else does - like there is a 'use by' date that we have to meet or else happiness will go sour like milk.

I wonder if, everyday, that we just 'be' or 'experience' is actually happiness and only those of us who can recognise the beauty of just 'being' or 'experiencing' knows that in that little tiny particle of time and space lies happiness as it's meant to be.

Isn't happiness that pinpointed moment when you look at a little baby's foot and marvel at it's creation - at five toes , at five fingers each with it's unique print of identity?

Isn't it the moment when you look at a flower and see perfection - whatever perfection means to you?

Isn't it that moment when the temperature of the breeze is just right and you can touch freedom as it passes around and over you?

Is it called happiness when you feel yet another bubble of love burst with pride when you think of someone special?

Today, I drove my son to his friend's holiday house in Inverloch, about 2 hours away from Melbourne. Adam and I stacked the car with our favourite CD's with every intention of playing them LOUD and singing to them even LOUDER - one of our favourite things to do together. There was Jimmy Hendrix, waiting for Hey Joe to be played; there was AC/DC and Nickleback. We had Diesel, James Reyne, Foo Fighters, Vika and Linda Bull and about 10 or so other bands all queued up.

Yet, there we were, half way through our trip and still talking and laughing - no music. We were just 'being' and it's one of those precious moments you share with your child, where they want to be with you because they're enjoying your company.

After dropping him off, I took three luxurious hours for myself, which felt like two weeks, and I meandered home via the coastline, taking photos of whatever caught my eye. The seabreeze was simply magical - cool enough to take the bite out of the blazing sun but not too cold that you didn't feel it strain through your pores taking all your woes and troubles away with it.

As much as I really and genuinely missed Grant not being with me, for three hours, I felt happy. Truly happy. For three hours, I was carefree, nonplussed, worry-free. No chores, no bills, no whinging voices..........nothing. Just me and my camera and nature waving it's fruits at me...."pick me, pick me".....

In those three hours, I missed Grant by my side, showing me something I had overlooked. I missed him directing my photos strategically or symmetrically or trying his own deft photographic hand with his dinky camera. I missed Alex, huffing and puffing and looking at her watch and sighing in that none-too-subtle art of communication that says "Are you going to be long at this? I have a life to attend to". I missed Adam, being patient and caring but, in reality, harmonising Alex's huffs and puffs but not wanting to reiterate the message that he has a life he, too, needs to attend to. I missed Sam just being there because Sam hasn't yet learned this fine art of puffing and puffing and sighing but, no doubt, he will.

I missed my family so much that I forgot how much they irritate me sometimes. I forgot how much I pray for pockets of silence - and yet here was a pocket of silence that I didn't know how to fill without them there. What a paradox of happiness, right?

Here I was, trying to escape the predictable patterns of my life and, simultaneously, missing the contents of the symmetry of those patterns at the same time.

There is something very delicious about missing someone. It reminds you how happy you are to have ever met them and that they are such an integral part of your life, whether by choice, by birth or my accident.

Today I tasted bright white happiness. That stupid, sun-drenched, cheesy-arsed grin of happiness.....that I had flown my birdcage and, yet, couldn't wait to get home. For me, it's the easiest thing to do - rather than read self-help books or attend courses, I fly a little. I fly away and just 'be'. By just 'being' I open my heart to the uncluttered form of freedom that allows my spirit to soar on those recharging and invigorating seabreezes. Those breezes come and embrace my worries and wrap them up and take them away, leaving me very grateful and full of love.

All the way home, I drove with that stupid cheesy grin of appreciation on my face.......I loved my family, I loved Australia, I loved our dry, parched, brown countryside and our vast rugged, sandblasted yet soft beaches. I loved the photo I took of a lonely little dandelion with it's bright white Andy Warhol hairstyle, I loved the hayroll-dotted acre upon acre of windmills boring away muddy water for our farms. I loved the music in my car, I loved that I knew most of the words and I loved the fact that I had the freedom and independence to take my son wherever he wanted to go.

I loved my life, today. I was free. I was independent. I was happy.