Happiness and sadness, similar and overwhelming. The same, because they are frightening and testing. One feels safer than the other, and then it changes. Sitting up in bed this morning, I could see the sky and the trees and the rain, feeding the baby, content. A song comes on the radio and my heart swells because my memory jolts awake, and it’s always like that, always a shiver down the spine and across the skin, a kick in the backside, or a punch to the gut. It’s the little things that make me so happy, he said, all I wanna do is live by the sea. Kind of dark and sad, but who knows why? I just think oh well, it is true. It was then and it is now. Because it’s good, yes it’s good, it’s good to be free…So I’m awake and looking at the sky and the tops of the trees are shaking as the rain batters down, and the baby is suckling, and I woke up older than I was when I went to bed. And all of these lives are hidden. All of these thoughts are unknown. And all of this was so very long ago yet no time has passed at all. All the little things that go on, like food falling out of cupboards, and socks growing dusty under beds, and bedsheets that need changing, all these little things go on inside rooms, inside houses, inside towns, inside countries, and all of these lives are hidden all over the planet while we just get on with our own. When I think about life ending I take a massive breath, the biggest I can find. It is moments we are built from, it is moments we all live for, the sad ones as well as the happy ones because they are all glorious, and none are so glorious as the memories we hold onto and take with us. Because we have no choice in the way time spins us forward, in the way it kills us, second by second, minute by minute, it is killing us while we breathe, and we fight to the death. And we’re all doing it, us and them, and you and me and the rats in the woodpile and the spider on the ceiling and the rustle in the bushes and the cries in the night, except they don’t care as much as us. They are living in the moment, not haunted by the past, not tortured by the future. They just live and breathe and die in their secret unknown lives. While human life is made up of snippets and flashes, and glimpses of what has gone, of photos and songs and smells and laughter and stories and a future which is precarious and wished for, ominous and eager, feared and desired. Then there is you, stuck in the middle inside that moment called now, alive while you remember how to breathe, while you can still recall what made you you. You don’t want to look at the time, you just want a chance to exist, but when you come back round it has still passed by and the next thing happens. It’s not really fair, when you think about it, how conscious we are. You can try and ignore it and fall through life, but it will still knock you sideways every once in a while, and you will take the deepest, longest breath. And one day I won’t be here, and neither will my footprints, and there will be no imprint on the bedsheets, no breath against the glass. All those little things, all those tiny moments, all the things I did and said and thought and believed and touched and dreamed and wrote and read and saw and heard, they will all be gone too. No one will ever know. It will all remain hidden.

Day 100! I’m not sure how many of you are aware of this social media challenge, and I’ve no idea how successful it’s been, but I decided to take it up for two reasons. One, I liked the thought of a challenge apparently 71% of people failed to complete due to lack of time, or possibly lack of things to be happy about? Two, I liked the whole positive vibe of it.  It may have helped that I took the challenge up when I was in a particularly happy place personally, (pregnant with my fourth child and full of the joys, longing to share, that sort of thing) but it also got me thinking.  About a year before I had not been so happy.  In fact I think its fair to say, and I’m sure my facebook statuses of the time would concur, that I had got myself trapped in a cycle of moaning.  I even ended up annoying myself with my own negativity.

So what changed?  Life events, or just my attitude?  I think, in reflection a bit of both.  Things improved financially for us, so that is always one less thing to stress about, and obviously the pregnancy was a huge factor in the smile on my face.  But before this challenge came up, I was able to wake myself up a bit, and remind myself of how damn lucky I am.  The thing about the challenge is it makes you look for things to be happy about.  What a positive approach to have!  So on greyer days, I would post about the baby wild rabbits I had spotted in the hedgerows while out walking, or the spread of dead nettles in my garden which were doing a great job encouraging the bees.  On days when I felt like moaning I was forced to search for what had made me smile, and suddenly the stuff that annoyed me seemed less and less important.

So looking back at a 100 days of happiness, I can see a clear pattern emerge.  Without a doubt I am an extremely fortunate person with a hell of a lot to feel happy about.  My posts are either about my kids, my pets, my garden, my writing, music, or the environment around me. It actually got hard to choose which thing to post about each day.  A lot were simple things, simple pleasures, like my duck enjoying a freshly filled bath, or my dog resting his head on my baby bump, or one of my kids leaving me little notes outside my bedroom door, or my son smiling broadly as he harvested his first pea pod.  Little things.  Free things.  Happy things.  

So on day 100, I find myself thinking about the whole thing.  I just feel lucky.  I think i knew I was before, but now I feel it even more and it is making me smile a lot.  I feel like I am surrounded by good things; from the seven year old who insists on making his own breakfast every school morning now that the baby is here, to the cool joys of a shady lane filled with birdsong to walk the dogs down .  The ponies in the field behind, and the sunsets that set the landscape ablaze, the wall of green that surrounds my garden and fills the views from my windows, to the sound of the river shushing by us in the middle of the night.  The satisfaction of my fingers flying over the keys while i thump out a brand new story, the absolute joy of reading a good review, the making of new friends, the holding on to old ones, the genuine sweet and unprompted kindness of so many people i know.  Happy, healthy, funny, questioning children with lots of crazy hair.  Two dogs racing across the common, their back feet overtaking their front, their ears flat against their skulls, eyes filled with pure joy when they return.  Music, all the time, everywhere, in the car, in the kitchen, in the lounge, outside in the garden.  Singing and dancing and being silly and getting lost in the memories that certain songs kick off.  Emotions heightened by chords, tones and arrangements, feelings swollen by lyrics that get it just right.  Excitement for the future…a baby boy growing and changing before our eyes…good times ahead.

Even today I would have struggled to decide what happy thing to post about, hence me deciding to write a blog entry instead.  There was the five hour block of sleep the baby allowed me last night, and also the gorgeous big smile he gave me at silly o’clock this morning.  There was the happiness in all the kids faces when they discovered the shop on the way to school sells loom bands! In a basket, right near the till!  There was the gift of an awesome Stone Roses t-shirt for the baby from a lovely, kind hearted friend, and another gift of the hungry caterpillar book and toy from my friends at book club.  Such kindness.  Then there was watching highlights from Glastonbury while I fed the baby, and just grinning at all those people in the crowds, all those people so so happy because of music and togetherness, and it’s so genuine and real and it’s the beautiful potential in all of us to be nice and get along and find joy and hold it tight, and having days like that, times like that.  Because that’s what it’s all about at the end of the day.  Having the time of your life.  As much as you can.  Whenever you can.  For whatever reasons you find.  

So i end my 100 happy days as happy as I started.  I’ve got a lot.  I hold it all dear and I won’t let it go.  You never know when things might change, you never know when luck might take a different turn, so you have to keep smiling while you can.  We haven’t got a lot in terms of money, or material things, but interestingly it was never those kind of things that made me happy anyway.  It was all the free things, all the things that were already there, and I just needed to remember that, and I just need to never forget it again!