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Your happiest moment ever!

HAPPIEST MOMENTS

It was the summer after 10th grade. I lived in DC, but was heading up to Martha's Vineyard for a summer camp. The bus to the Woods Hole ferry didn't come until 11, so I had time to kill. I walked down Newbury Street and stopped by an art supply store where I bought a sketch pad and a charcoal pencil. Then I picked up a coffee, a strawberry and a maple iced donut at Dunkin' Donuts and sat on the banks of the Charles River. I tried drawing. The art was awful. The donuts were delicious. The experience was incredible. I think it had something to do with the incredible freedom I felt, wandering around this new city.

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I had just learned how to scuba dive. I saved up and bought all the equipment I needed and headed for the beach. My mother came along to watch me dive and as I waded into the water, she shouted, "See if you can find a ring down there somewhere". I dove down and searched around. After a few minutes of searching, I saw something shiny lodged between some rocks. I picked it up and lo and behold, it was a ring! That was my happiest moment...so far.

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I was roller skating beside the ocean in Venice Beach, California and listening to the Moody Blues song, "Tuesday Afternoon" through my head sets. I looked out at the sunbeams dancing and shimmering on the ocean. While I was skating, a seagull swooped down and was flying just ahead of me at chest level. I stretched out my arms like I had wings and I felt like I was flying, too. I suddenly realized that I had no needs whatsover. I felt a rush in my head. I was completely free and at one with everything around me. It was euphoric.

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I went on a University exchange to England in the fall of 1995 for a semester. Before travelling to England, I landed in Paris and spent a week there, staying in hostels and exploring the city. One day was spent in the Louvre which turned out be a bit disappointing after the build-up it got in guidebooks and from people I knew who'd visited it. Slightly depressed, I left the museum and ended up in a nearby park that had a fountain in a circular pool and with benches surrounding it. I bought a can of iced tea from a vendor and simply sat and watched the people passing by for nearly an hour.

It was truly a perfect moment. Everything else going on in my life - homesickness mixed with the excitement of my first trip abroad, being fairly broke, the disappointment with the museum, a bit of nervousness about the approaching semester - dropped away and I felt a beautiful balance and contentment that I've approached at other times but perhaps never fully experienced since.

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What do these "happiest moments" have in common?

They're not fake. They're not about money.

They're solitary, spontaneous and simple.

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