Happiness

"Happiness is finding a pencil, pizza with sausage, telling the time. Happiness is learning to whistle, tying your shoes for the very first time. . . . Happiness is morning and evening, day time and night time too. For happiness is anyone and anything at all that's loved by you." Or so say Charlie Brown and his friends in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown.

I just finished reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (excellent, excellent book that I will blog more about in the future), and there was one paragraph that made me think of Charlie Brown's description.

Francie, the heroine, thinks to herself, "People always think that happiness is a faraway thing, something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains-- a cup of strong hot coffee when you're blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you're alone-- just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness."

I think Charlie and Francie are on to something. So often I'm so busy looking toward things I don't have, and I forget to look at all the "little things" all around me that are really what give life its color and joy.