happiness

This quote from the movie version of The Hours (for all I know, it may be in the book as well) has stayed with me, and I'm finding it especially meaningful of late:

"I remember one morning getting up at dawn, there was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling? And I remember thinking to myself: So, this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts. And of course there will always be more. It never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then."

--Clarissa Vaughan

I had this exact feeling on Friday afternoon, driving down Highway 80 on an absolutely gorgeous day, the kind where the bay glitters with refracted sunlight and the water is blue and clean and unmarred save the bright sails of windsurfers. The wind was in my hair and good music was blasting out of the stereo. I'd done all my errands, I was finally settling into the groove of my new job, I had a break from schoolwork, my personal life was going wonderfully and I had nothing but free time to look forward to that weekend. And I thought: I am HAPPY. Not just my normal (mostly) everyday happy, but deeply, profoundly happy.

And then I got a call a few hours later that someone very, very close to me has cancer. It's quite a treatable cancer, and I know that it will be fine. It's not that I'm suddenly unhappy. If anything, I'm more grateful than ever; more aware of what this person means to me. It's more the idea that you can't expect to hold on to full-on, blissed-out happiness. Your mind tries to close around it like little hands reaching for a butterfly, but it cannot because happiness is ineffable, intractable; it is only truly possible within the eternity of the moment. I suppose that is what makes those moments so mind-blowingly beautiful when they do occur.