At 2 am this morning I found myself sitting in front of the
laptop, going over the day. Tired as I
was, my eyelids began to droop and I felt myself float away. The day that had just finished was not an
easy one. There were things on my mind
and a weight in my heart that I wanted so badly to go away. So I sat there, telling the pain to stop,
asking for a short reprieve. Then it
came.
A belly laugh that first began as a tiny, tiny tickle in the
center of my body slowly built inside me, pushing upward past my stomach, up my
chest and through my heart. It came without warning, surprising me like a
mischievous child hiding behind a door that I had thought was closed. The sweet, pure laughter spilled out like a
clear stream of cool water and it gurgled and bubbled outward, startling me
with the power of the mirth it brought.
And I sat there – heavy heart no longer heavy, shaking all at once with delightful
glee and panic thinking that I had at last gone mad. And again without warning something said to
me: “You hear that? That is your soul.
That is what you are made of.
That is who you are.”
I sat there giggling thinking to myself that yes, this is
me. This is who I am, really. I am Happiness. How could I forget that? How sweet it was to remember. How comforting to know that all I had to do
was go to my center and I would find me, Happiness, waiting.
I went to sleep thinking that this is where I will go to
when I need to find beauty. When I need
to be at peace. When I need to find my
balance. When I need to remind myself
that life is not so bad. This is where I
will go when I simply want to enjoy the little pleasures that I have kept
inside me, saving them for grey-clouded days like this. How simple yet how true.
Laughter – that is my simple pleasure. It will always be there when I reach for it.