Happiness is reading a fat book tucked into bed with a nice cup of hot cocoa for company :)

I woke up this morning with a horrendous gastric tummy ache and the incessant feeling like I didn't get enough sleep - even though I slept for a good eight-and-a-half hours. Have been feeling like that for a while now, super tired even though I make sure that I sleep for at least seven to eight hours a night. I think I'm becoming old; my previously beloved late bedtimes are not agreeing with me at all now. :(

So anyhow, I've digressed! As I was saying, I woke up this morning feeling positively crummy. I downed two antacids and tried to read my gastric pains away, but they just wouldn't leave me alone. So I had to come downstairs to force digestive biscuits into my stomach in the hope that that would stop the gastric juices from churning. It was a while before it stopped hurting, a while more before it stopped being uncomfortable altogether, and yet even a longer while more before I felt up for eating some sort of a proper lunch. All this while, I was superbly annoyed and dispirited, and thought why does all this happen to me? As the pain ebbed, my mood improved considerably and I found myself enjoying the cool rain breeze coming in from the open back door and munching on my digestive biscuits. I thought to myself: I am actually some sort of happy at this moment! Following from that train of thought, as I was cooking my lunch, I thought to myself: what is happiness?

It struck me then that much as I moan about having to write my thesis, read my articles, and do everything else - I actually do enjoy doing them all, and wouldn't trade what I do for anything else in the world. And much as I moan about wanting this or that or being so unlucky in my lot in life, I am actually pretty much happy and contented at the way things have been going. Happiness is not an airy-fairy value that can only be fulfilled by some big vague Thing that I can never attain - happiness, or my happiness, is often found in the littlest things in my life each day. I shouldn't strive to be unhappy when in truth, I am everything but. I may be frustrated sometimes at the work piling up, or prone to bouts of grumbling at having to work hard to get what I want, but I often ask myself: if I took all that away, would I be much happier? I'd be a lot freer, yes, but happier? I doubt.


Today's happiness came to me as I was lying in bed in the afternoon, tucked in with my nice fat Harry Potter book that I'm reading for my thesis, with a cup of hot cocoa beside me and the wind from the fan tickling my feet. Yesterday's happiness was when I realised how full my future seems to be, especially with the news of my favourable queue number for the Punggol Waterway development and plans for Masters in English Lit in the pipelines. Tomorrow's happiness, I daresay, will be at the point when I hit "save" for the umpteenth time and send my draft to Susan Ang so that I can rest my brain for a bit before starting work again the next day.