I’m sitting at a coffee shop. Staring at a blank computer screen watching the cursor flash like it’s daring me to say what I want to say. Off, on, off, on. Happy. Happy is a big word for a small word. It’s a word on birthday cards and advertisements for dating apps and paper bags that hold Big Macs. It’s a marketing scheme as much as an emotion that you feel when you see a fluffy dog. It’s a word that I’m not sure describes what I’m talking about as much as I wish it did because the meaning has been lost to millions of national holidays and Fridays. It’s been turned beige by overuse and under-feeling. Some people have forgotten the meaning entirely. The holidays are here so you are going to hear it a lot. It is red and green and sparkly and covered in receipts. So I by no means challenge you to use it less. I challenge you to rebel by understanding it. Taking it in, re-deciding what the heck it means. Maybe feeling it more. Or notice that you’re feeling it more. It’s a tough thing, that happy thing. It looks like honey and feels far away. And sometimes when we say it we use it as a synonym for not-sad. I don’t think you should be not-sad. I think you should be happy. Fully, truly, consumingly. Not all the time, not everywhere, because this is life and there’s a lot of dog shit that comes with a lot of cute dogs. And you’re inevitably going to step in it at some point. But I hope, there are seconds, or minutes or hours when you can look down or up or in or out and say that word and it feels more than lukewarm and sounds like much more than an adjective.
