A Happy Pill: listing down things that make you happy.

I've been, for quite some time, visiting a certain girl's blogs, named Carina. No, I do not know her personally, nor does she know me; she's just a stranger I found at the place where you find many other wonderful things--the world wide web.

For a very talented person--she designs stuff for a living and writes for Philippine Daily Inquirer--Carina describes herself as a deeply sad person. Which, though I find surprising given her accomplishments and what seems like a privileged life, I understand with every fiber of my being. Because at the end of the day, it's not what you do, or the things you have and own, it's about how you feel towards all of those things. "Toska," as the great Nabokov puts it (and as blogged by Tisa). People have just got that natural attraction to loneliness. There's something so alluring about it that we all like it so much. And as we find happiness so difficult to maintain, loneliness, on the other hand, is so easy to nurture. I wonder why all the time. Why is happiness so difficult to achieve? Sometimes I feel that people have grown so accustomed to a world of loneliness that our hearts aren't simply ready for the good stuff. It's a tragedy, what loneliness does to people. It makes us scared and cold, always sent running, and running towards, well, nowhere. Any tiny flicker of light we blow out before the wind does it for us; and in the presence of anything true, instead of being grateful, we wait, constantly, as if almost hoping, for the other shoe to drop. Because we believe from the core of our being, one way or another, it will. It always does anyway.

But to be forever running can be exhausting. And so, in the light of this epidemic that seems to be (forever) going around, wouldn't it be nice to stop for even just a while, and remind ourselves of the things that actually make us happy? What I am about to do is a feeble attempt to continue what was started at Maybeveryhappy by Carina. But much more than that, this is a feeble attempt to spread happiness--by making people who read this realize the little things that make them happy. Shall I start? Here is the list of 10 things that make me happy:

How about you? What are the 10 things that make you happy? Doesn't have to be anything grand, or life-changing; just right now, what would make you happy? I'd love to hear about it. I'm pretty excited about this, I don't know why. Maybe I've just been living sad for too long. So here's to looking at the wonderful.

I leave you now with a song by Noah and the Whale called Blue Skies. It goes: "I'd do anything to be happy. Blue skies are coming." Noah and the Whale is one of my most favorite bands, so I hope you enjoy listening while pondering over your happy things. :)