Re: The Conditions of Happiness

It isn’t a matter of being happy, but experiencing happiness now and then. Like a sudden, warm gust of wind. It has nothing to do with contentment, which is motionless in its complacency. Happiness pushes you like the Santa Ana wind, and almost knocks you off your feet as you walk home from the 4th grade after a good day. A day when Mrs. Mullins stamped your science test with her big, red “Good Job” stamp and scribbled a capital A that looked like a star. A day when you managed to land beautifully from a cherry drop - from the high bar—while Todd and Pam were watching. A day that makes you wish everyone really did break into song like in a Disney film, and that you could be Lesley Ann Warren with a pet alligator, and a father who wears lettermen sweaters and smokes a pipe. And you sing into the warm Santa Ana wind about a bullfrog named Jeremiah.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not a moment of celebration. It’s not about the achievements. It is the feeling of—if not entitlement—the rightness of your place in the world: life is good. It’s a certainty that blows through your heart.

And then leaves you cold.

Comments

[Kris]

This is beautiful. It's not how I would define happiness, but it's frakking beautifully written. As always.

[Bo Ahlberg]

The metaphor of the "Santa Ana Wind" is one I find strongly bound to my experience with life. The concept of happiness being strong and an irresistible pressure that pushes its way into your life, like a Santa Ana wind, is both an apt description and a clear metaphor for those of us who lived with such winds. Happiness can be something that, like a Santa Ana wind, comes in strong forceful gusts buffeting its way into your life and in the constant pressure of a warm and unrelenting wind that does not accept your resistance.

I grew up with those same winds both real and metaphoric and this bit of prose artfully reconstructs both the emotional and physical feelings of that time. Very nice. Thanks.