Happiness

"For a happy life, three things are necessary:

Something to hope for.

Something to do.

Someone to love."

Fin has just started to read a book his dad gave him when we were over visiting, and tonight I was peeking over his shoulder. For each day of the year, it shares a stimulating thought, a timely parable, or simply a small scrap of wisdom for you to wrap yourself around as you drift off to sleep every night. The snippet above is the lesson for the 1st of January (I know, it's August. What can I say? I find it hard not to start a book from the beginning).

I like to think I'm doing okay on the third thing. The second one is a bit trickier, but I hope to get there some day soon-ish. Which brings me neatly to the first thing. Hope. Sometimes I am brimming with it. Other days it seems oddly far away, a faded flag flickering in a distant breeze. But right now, today, I feel hopeful. Maybe it is the good news we had yesterday and the dizzying rush of relief that always hits when the cloud lifts. Maybe the process of removing physical clutter from my life has set free more than just my shoe collection. Or maybe I'm just excited about the puppy. Who can say?

I am rolling around other thoughts in my mind that I hope (there it is again!) to share with you in a more lucid and less rambling fashion another day. In the meantime, those of you on twitter who were kind enough to send me your woots and yays and pew pew pews yesterday, thank you. You bring me hope too. 

P.S. If you haven't yet checked out yesterday's swirly skirt giveaway, go, now! Run don't walk!

Images of hope, love and something to do, by Elizabeth Messina of Kiss The Groom via Junebug Weddings via Cara's Pinterest.

Quotation from Through the Year with William Barclay: Devotional Readings for Every Day, William Barclay, 1971.