"The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us."
Ashley Montagu,
British-American anthropologist
We all live for those moments of happiness that seize us and shock us with a sense of awe and wonder. When I rounded the corner of the trail and came upon these vast meadows of beargrass, I definitely found myself gripped by one of those moments! Occurrences like these reveal to us the fact that happiness and surprise are not emotions WE own, but presences who indwell us and who want to have a relationship with us. Their innate subjectivity is evident in the fact that they really do have the capacity to SEIZE and HOLD ON to us. However, although these moments come to us unbidden at first, we are thereafter called to CREATE the favorable environment - through the active practice of an ATTITUDE of happiness - that will enable them to continue revealing themselves in the future. For happiness is actually a two-way love relationship - one that occurs between the amazing epiphany on the one hand, and we who create the soil in which it can sprout on the other. As Mary Oliver once exclaimed: "I was a bride married to amazement."
Photo: Beargrass and Mount Rainier; Mount Rainier National Park, WA; July 25, 2014
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