When you get right to the heart of it, I am a fairly simple girl. It doesn’t really take much to make me happy. Even in the midst of affliction, I eventually level out to a general state of optimism and hope. But when bad things happen, even I need a boost. We all have times when we forget how to find happiness…
I was recently reading some old chat transcripts from a pretty dark time in my life. It made me sad to read the words I wrote at the time, seeing just how unhappy I was.
But then something turned in the conversation – a lightness returned to my words. When my friend asked if I was feeling better, I mentioned that I had just read my list of favorite things. I talked about how I made the list to help me see beauty when everything looked bleak.
Now, here I am in another dark period of my life, wondering again how to find happiness. Thankfully, I am older and wiser than I was then. I now know that no pain or sorrow lasts forever unless we give it the power to do so. But that doesn’t really make it hurt any less. So, I decided to take a look at that decade-old list of favorite things just to see how much I’ve changed, and also to find the beauty that got me through then – hoping it could help me through now.
About half of the list still resonated deeply with me, but the other half felt a little empty – removed from my experiences by ten years and a lot of growing up. So I decided it was time to make another list of my favorite things, one that perhaps resounds a little more with adulthood and who I have discovered myself truly to be.
You are welcome to read my list. I hope that it makes you happy. But most importantly, I hope that you will take the time to write your own list. There are always beautiful things in the world. Sometimes it’s just harder to see them. When things get difficult, don’t forget that they are still there.
