The Blog

He squealed in delight as he merrily skipped into the little red car. 
 
I had a bad cold, and so I was not driving my four-year-old son to school as usual; a friend of mine offered to do it for me.  In her little red car.  And as I watch him, thrilled to experience something seemingly so ordinary and unexciting, I realized that for him, in his unjaded little mind, this was not a mere change of cars, this was extroardinary and exciting.  Perhaps it was the new color, new smell, new textures, different engine noises. 
 
But children grow up.  And as we get older, and get caught up in the bigger struggles, it becomes difficult to savor life's littler events as possible sources of happiness.  They tend to seem trivial in the constant pursuit of it. 
 
So we immerse ourselves in the pursuit of the bigger things.  We keep waiting to be happily-ever-after.  But life is not a fairytale.  It involves an eclectic mix of emotions, from joy to sadness, gratitude to grief, humility to euphoria.  It can involve holes that can never be filled.
 
However, we can always plant little seeds of happiness.  Even if the joy that blooms is there for just a few moments in time.  It is when happiness seems most elusive, that we need to find it in these little moments more than ever.  A real look at the beautiful mountains that surround me.  A few moments alone in the warmth of the sun.  A little brown box discovered at the door.  A tall glass of tea with a friend.  Running barefoot with a child from the scorching, slippery sand to the cold comfort of the dark green grass.  
 
We all have little red cars in our lives.  Let's go out and use them.  Make a conscious effort to experience them, and get little sprinklings of joy.