“Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.” — Anne Frank
I feel like it shouldn’t be so hard to be happy.
Happiness should be one of those things granted to you by life– Like the ability to breathe.
However sometimes I feel like I get so caught up in looking for grandiose happy moments that it keeps me from appreciating the small simple moments that happen daily.
Things like the the train running express directly to my stop in the suburbs, sitting in the sun room with my roommates laughing about silly things or waking up to the sounds of a snoring dog.
Lately I’ve seen the hashtag “100HappyDays” floating around the vastness of the interwebz on simple picture posts about pies, flea markets and unpacking moving boxes and I was intrigued by the idea of these small tokens of happiness.
My intrigue led me to Google the hashtag and I found a website by the same name.
The concept is simple; be happy.
Find the happy in 100 consecutive days without giving up.
One of the main excuses for people not completing the task was a lack of time.
The hecticness and stress of a busy schedule cause most people to miss the things keeping their lives from being a complete mess.
Or maybe I’m projecting?
Regardless I liked the idea of finding the small and the less obvious and signed up for the challenge.
However because I’m a writer and I’ve been going through a small bout of writer’s block I’ve decided not to only photograph my happy, but to also take those moments and write about it.
So consider this a precursor to my hundred happy days and I encourage you, my dear friends, to take the challenge. Even if it’s not in taking a bunch of pictures and hashtagging the crap out of them, like many of us like to do, but just taking a moment every day to recognize the small, the insignificant, overlooked parts of our lives that make us smile every day.
Because those are the things that will shine in the moments when everything seems so dark.
So here’s to 100 happy days.
The Secret Life of Pandas 
🙂 okay, here’s a tougher thing, list what you can of this happiness backwarks… last night I had just enough of the three fuels to spin up one heck of quart zised 😉 margarita. what sits on my mind the most is how to crack the malaise of melancholia called the feeling of PRISION living in my resident’s minds and while this is a tough spot for me with my own favor at the job the challenge is still one of a deeper happiness. I’ll also say lol that there is something about that quitting time that makes it rather a gem of a moment which led to shopping for mexican chocolate for maybe mole maybe just hot choc’d coffees. I believe it is a standard joy to have a pile of means to go after the main bills but the biggest joy was taking the last of that moment’s means to step to the closest good mexican joint a chain called santiagos for a fabulous beef and bean smothered which led to the saturday breakfast burrito too 😀 but backwards to thursday says it was frand to hear friday I wasn’t working, wednesday and tusday thrills of getting up at all hours of the afternoon because I could…and monday was a blessed day to I really cant remember anymore 😉 but the point is that joy is there and well worth remembering versus some mission finding it 😀 which I will anyways but I felt ornery hearing it 😀 so …hence your coment
Yes. God, yes.
And happiness shouldn’t be easy. Happiness takes work. Happiness is the acknowledgment in yourself, it’s mindfulness of your environment, it’s effortful, but it is worth it. Sadness doesn’t take work. Sadness is easy. Happiness is worth the work it takes.
You can do it! Maybe I will, too.
This morning we had bike, scoot and walk to school day. it made me happy. 🙂
I keep seeing this on Facebook. It seems like a great concept, but I’ve taken to making sure the posts are hidden because some of the things that make other people happy make me not happy (the closing of abortion clinics was today’s). I’ll do it, but I think I’ll keep it more to myself.
It’s a very good exercise in appreciation. I only know one person who has been doing it on Facebook. She typically has a photo and says a couple of sentences about it.. I’ve enjoyed reading hers. I’m not good on focus and completion so didn’t attempt it though it crossed my mind when she was on about number 12. Your happy is out there…. I hope you find it. peace & sparkles