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Sometimes everything is beautiful, like the still time, the pink quiet time, the tip-toe down to get my coffee time, before the day brings all the busy things.

Sometimes everything is exactly as it should be, like my age, and size, and current location, before I start dreaming again of perfection, other places, younger years, jeans that fit.

The present moment instills lessons about time—how quickly, how slowly it actually moves.

Sometimes, a faraway son forges a weird and wonderful off-road path, while a warrior goddess daughter climbs a mountain, independently, outside of me, but attached to me in spirit, nonetheless. Sometimes I must let go of my children, yet hold them close in other ways, still.

Sometimes, everything feels relaxed and right, as the eggs cook, and the bed stays messy, and the words start to surface, and babies are born, and flowers are blooming, and the whole bright beaming world just outside my window looks like a promise kept.

It’s in this time, this “some” time that I remember how to be happy. With smaller things. Things that don’t flash and beep and shine. Things that don’t lure me to empty my bank account to pay for miracles. Ways to get thin quickly. Ways to stop aging. Ways to lift my booty and increase my libido. Ways to be sexy, tighten my jowls, contour my roundness, transform my life.

Sometimes, I remember that happiness comes from watching other busy, living things. Things that don’t give one whit about me or my selfish world, things that chirp and hop and grow. Things doing their own damn thing whether I stop to notice them or not.

Sometimes, my happiness is right here beneath my nose, hiding in plain sight. In my garden, on the trail, in the dust of dusk, blinking by the wood pile, inside a dripping hose, on the grass, peeking over a mountain, or sitting sweetly on my tongue.

Sometimes, everything feels right as rain, so I must let it be. I don’t need to be anywhere, with anyone else doing anything at every moment. Letting things be what they are without enhancement or pining to change them is what living happy looks like. Sometimes, when I halt the striving, I find a bit of peace.

I remember that life is inside the spaces, the time spent waiting for something to change, something to enter, someone to show up, something that helps me switch gears.

But most times, happiness comes from not switching.

Sometimes should always feel like the morning, like dawn, like a beginning.

In the end, it’s that feeling—the one of hope and possibility, a treasure waiting to come, a new day approaching, with all its wondrous unknowns, its uncertainty, its blank slate washed clean of the day before, its simple enduring presence, that helps me stop and just be grateful.

Sometimes, to be happy, grateful is all I need to be.

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