Happiness, In Its Purest Form

Sometimes I consider leaving everything. Sometimes I consider living in an isolated cabin in the woods for a year and do nothing but write. Sometimes I consider that happiness in its purest form: To live in the quiet, to wake each morning and walk out into a world where everything is just as it should be, just as nature intended; To have only my journals to speak to, and of course the birds, and trees, and grass; To create with all of the passion and determination that could flow from each of us were it not for the distractions of the everyday. Happiness, in its purest form.

I think of her washing her clothes in a basin on the street. I think of the three walls, the thatched roof, the blanket she calls her bed. I think of the way her home reminds me of the kind of dioramas I used to make in the fourth grade, one side cut off of the shoebox to see the life inside. I smile at the thought of the poster of Rocky hanging on her wall. I do not doubt the sorrow of her life, nor do I doubt the happiness of it. How she must love that poster, that shelter, those clothes she washes with such tenderness in the muck of public water.

What material thing could I possibly love with such fervor? How could my tongue possibly understand the richness of food without gratitude for it? What secrets does she know that I will never comprehend?

My first thought was that I wanted to save this woman from her life. I wanted to pick her up in my arms and hold her, tell her that everything would be okay, and mean it. I wanted to give her everything I had, from the money in my bank account to the shoes on my feet. I wanted to take her to the field of sunflowers I once walked through in France, to show her such priceless gold existed. But she probably already knew of such beauty. And while my first thought was that I wanted to save this woman from her life, my second thought was who would save me from mine?

Who would teach me to walk through fields of flowers, to navigate by the stars, to make my mind so clear that each pound of my feet upon the earth became a tiny miracle unto itself?

Slowly I am learning to listen to the rivers as they lap against the shore, to watch the sun rise each morning with all of the amazement and gratitude it deserves, to feel the depth of each color that emerges with the coming spring. Slowly I am teaching myself to save my own life. Perhaps it takes a lifetime to reach even the tip of understanding, but fortunately, a lifetime is exactly what I have.

I envy flowers for the way they rise and bloom in a moment of fiery exquisiteness before falling back to the earth, for ours is a much more difficult journey. We rise and fall again and again, each time with a better understanding of the cycle, with the knowledge that we will have time to try again. And I think because of that knowledge, I often dull the blossom with the subtle inklings that darkness will soon occur once more. I’ll have another chance at greatness, but meanwhile, I’m passing it by. Flowers don’t have such regret.

And so I left her there on the street, washing herself clean. I left her there, beautiful flower, soaking her roots in life. Happiness, in its purest form.