A Not Today day

We all know it's impossible to define or pin down material happiness. Like Maria's bubble in the hand, once glimpsed and marvelled over fleetingly - and glimpse is all we can do - happiness bursts and vanishes exactly like a bubble. Right? Right. 

Happiness is not for the holding. Happiness is for the glimpsing, like light in a tunnel, unlike daylight, long and inevitable. As with all things glimpsed you have to be concentrating to achieve the glimpse. Like they say: blink and you'll miss it. So happiness is a concentrated glimpse.

I have responded to this happiness dilemma by defining MY happiness in the moments or days when I have the thought: 'Not today. I don't' want to die today.' The other days I'm not going round moping that I do want to die, not at all. Those days I'm just getting on with life, good and bad. But on these, fairly rare days and moments, when I'm walking along the beach I've walked along as many as three thousand times before, or I'm sat around the table with the family now teenage, or I'm Sunday strolling with my beta half, or any number of very many other possible moments, and I think, simply: Not Today. I don't want to die today, and that's my Not Today day moment. My happiness moment, as clear as it gets. Sometimes I even get to feeling a little gratitude - which can be even harder to hold than happiness - for the near certainty that I am not going to die on that day, depending on the time of day, etc.

As happiness symbols go I realise my Not Today day sentiment is a little droll, being so death-centred. A bit minimalist. But there it is. It's real. That's how happiness happens for me. And it's so real that I can't even say Not Today. I can't even say:

I DON'T WANT TO DIE TODAY

Because, sadly or otherwise, today is not a Not Today day...