“Why do we never know when we’re happy…but we always know when we’re unhappy.”
Those words were spoken by a man in the Scandinavian TV show we watched last night. He had lost his wife suddenly. Their relationship hadn’t been particularly fluid at the time. Their conversation had grown stilted and monosyllabic. And yet, now she was gone forever; and all the joy he didn’t know was his came rushing forward into an empty room.
Today, I want to know, I mean really know how happy I am.
I lay in our wonderful bed. We’ve had it since 2003. In the spirit of Know How Happy You Are, I loved how it always feels like it’s holding me up, how it snuggles me into my wife, how it keeps us warm, how it makes that magical darktime space for conversations that can only happen in the middle of the night when neither of us can sleep.
What can I give to the world today, as a thank you for even just this one detail of a wonderful bed to sleep in?
And that’s not even counting how many other blessings have been fueling and shaping my day quietly, humming along without acknowledgement or gratitude? If I were to name them one by one, all day long, through lunch time, into the afternoon, all through dinner and way past my bedtime — I would only have touched their outer edges.
So there’s this great bed plus the 189,453,984 unseen blessings.
What can I give back to the world today as my thank you?
I will start with kindness.