Let’s Call It Happiness

I am writing simply because I want to capture this moment and not let it fade like an old photograph, its sharpness lost, its details scratched out. I think that describing a moment, tickling all senses in a flow of words that create a wonderful melody in your head, is the best way a person can remember a feeling, since it is all abstract. That is why I am writing and continue to write and hope with everything I’ve got that I’ll never stop. But I don’t think I can stop, for the sheer mess in my head needs to have an outlet, to be materialized in some way. I need to confront it, see it and hold it, and maybe then I will have even the slightest idea of what to do with it.

These are my thoughts as I sit on the ground, pencil in one hand and journal in another that is balancing it on my knees. I am sitting on my yellow beach towel. Though warm sand is what you’d expect beneath the tiny towel, hard soil, hot from the scorching sun, is what I am sitting on. Soil that Aristotle walked across as a child, in a now ancient city of Stagira.

I took a day trip to see the place of birth of one of the most influential people in history. However, upon arriving I realized that it’s closed, or so the sign said. Upon further inspection, and a big push from an older couple, I saw that the entrance is open and you can easily go in. Taking a risk, which I don’t normally do, I walked in (maybe trespassed). Losing sight of the couple, I was left blissfully alone, as I am right now sitting beneath the shadow of ruins I hiked to see.

The only sound I can hear is birds chirping and a slight breeze rustling the pages of an abandoned poetry book that lay next me. It’s peaceful. Peaceful in a way I haven’t felt in a long time. In the constant rush of everyday life I realize I yearn for moments of utter stillness. Phone discarded somewhere at the bottom of my bag and no hand watch on my left hand. Nor the right one. The only way I can tell that time is passing is by the position of the sun in the sky. But I don’t know exactly how much time that is nor do I seem to care. I take a deep breath and feel the pungent grass aroma enter my nostrils. It reminds me of my dad working in our backyard back home.

Quickly, I discard the picture aside as I continue to appreciate the beauty before me. Ancient ruins built by hands erased by cruelty of time, freshly trimmed grass and a far off, seemingly empty beach where the sea performs its never ending dance, back and forth..back and forth..back and forth…Such a beautiful rhythm. I synchronize my breathing to it and feel everything within my body slow down. My eyes are distracted by a slight movement to the left of my knees. It is a turtle with a rather large crack in its shell, I hope it doesn’t hurt. We don’t notice cracks in things around us anymore. Looking at endless content inside our phones makes us not take in the world around us in a way that we should. I wonder how many cracks I've missed so far in my life, what patterns of thoughts they could’ve awakened and would my life be any different now as a consequence of those experiences.

A train of thought is interrupted again. There are tiny flies around me, everywhere. So tiny I can’t hear them but not tiny enough to go unnoticed. Immediately I think of a corpse and therefore death. Logic or not, that is where my mind is now. It’s weird that I am not upset andscared as I usually am of death, only curious, maybe more than usual. The tranquility I feel now, lightness of being, of soul, of whatever this inside me is or whatever I am, can not be disrupted by anything, not even thoughts of death. Some might call this abstract sensation happiness, some might say it’s more. I don’t know what this is nor how I’d define true happiness. Everything is up in the air and riddled with theories that contradict each other, or worse themselves. In the midst of all the chaos and mess, I will say that this feeling I feel now is for me happiness. I say for me since it is a subjective experience. I know nothing for a fact except that I exist and feel these things that I am, probably unsuccessfully, explaining here. What others feel I do not know and never will. I am me and only me, the privacy of their mind I can’t and will never see.

I wonder what death is like and why we ought to only give it the notions of being brutal. It is an easy assumption to make since it is the complete unknown that no living being can witness and speak of. We are terrified of the unknown, but it doesn't necessarily have to be traumatic or excruciatingly painful, does it? Could it be like this feeling I feel right now. Slow and steady and warm, achieving a feeling of an out of body experience. As if you were floating in space and time, since you would technically be floating somewhere. Away. This feeling reminded me of Tolstoy’s novella “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, where the protagonist's last breaths and the very act of dying are described in such a gentle manner. Alleviation of extraordinary pain he’d been feeling up until then made death desirable. It helps me to at least hope that death might feel like that. Hopefully this way of thinking will remain even after the moment of let’s call it happiness evaporates into real life. I’ll see.