happiness.

I think there is an art to happiness. A way of just being in the center of your own life, being totally present, and just celebrating all that you are, mistakes and all. There is an art to being present in those moments that take your breath away.... The other day I was walking out of the grocery store, feeling the winter air, and the afternoon sunshine, arms full of groceries. And it just came over me: "this is my life. all of our hard work and journeying and questioning leads to these simple satisfactions, of light and air and food." And even if that very moment summed up all the meaning in life, I would be perfectly happy. I wish I had the wisdom to always live into that beautiful everyday ordinariness. That is everything. There is freedom in just appreciating all that is.

I was reading through the New Yorker today, and they did a wonderful tribute to John Updike with pages of excerpts from his writings. Updike's work is so full of those ordinary beautiful moments. It's so real, it breaks your heart.

Here is John Updike describing a young man who is driving a car through the middle of the night, his friend asleep in the passenger seat. For me this is a description of perfect happiness, the kind of complex simplicity that life is made up of, deep and meaningful precisely because it is so accessible:

"Nothing happened, the car stayed firm on the road, Neil slept, his face turned skyward... There were so many reasons for me feeling happy. We were on our way. I had seen dawn. This far I had brought us safely. Ahead, a girl waited who, if I asked would marry, but first there was a long trip. Many hours and towns interceded between me and that encounter. There was the quality of the 10 am sunlight as it existed in the air ahead of the windshield, filtered by the thin overcast, blessing irresponsibility... And there was knowing that twice since midnight a person had trusted me enough to fall asleep beside me." -John Updike