How to Savour Small Moments of Happiness

By Marisa Falconi

It’s Not a Quote on Instagram

I love seeing people happy.

I’ve had a weird relationship with happiness. I’ve both craved and shunned happiness. Chased after it and chased it away. Celebrated every high claiming it to be the real me, and wallowed in every low telling myself that negativity is my honest truth.

And with age and the luxury of introspection I’ve come to realise that the highs and lows of life have nothing to do with happiness. Highs and lows are simply that. Like the tide or the weather, things come and go: moods, feelings, states, phases, fortune, despair, good times and hard ones.

Happiness deserves to be looked at differently. Maybe as a conscious a choice. We choose each day to welcome it or create it within our hearts. And it isn’t always easy. On days when the rent is missed or the relationship isn’t working or the black cloud of depression blows in or whatever worldly and normal thing occurs to pull us into a low state, it isn’t easy to choose happiness. And it’s okay not to.

Bypassing is when we spin the hard times into lies and tell ourselves everything happens for a reason. Then we smile and say, “It’s a blessing, really” because we fear being seen as anyone other than an okay, positively beaming human being.

But happiness doesn’t require denial. It embraces grief and loss and despair. It sits in the background of the heart, aflame and ever-burning, only to fire up big and bright once the body and mind have digested the wounds and finished their healing. It’s not a quote on Instagram or a life lived on the beach. It can happen in the office and it’s there alongside the mundane routine of parenthood and the like.

I love seeing people happy because it reminds me that nothing is perfect, that nothing lasts forever, and that brief moments of happiness are beautifully fleeting. I’m reminded to cherish them without attachment. To celebrate the fact that they’re there, even when we can’t feel them. Even when we aren’t experiencing them. 

Happiness doesn’t have to be a lifestyle. It isn’t a full-time job. It’s a subtle sweetness that never feels like how it looks in the movies or online. And I’m learning to savour it. 

Words by Marisa Falconi

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