Simplicity & happiness
The most simple things can bring the most happiness
Izabella Scorupco
Holidays are expensive. I mean, you pay a lot to get to an exciting destination but once you’re there, you go out, you drink, you have adventures, you bleed money like a hemophiliac.
So, on coming home, I’ve had to cut right back.
I’m staying in to cook. I’m bringing in lunch. I’m baking again.
I forgot how much I love to bake.
I turn the music right up, dance around in my socks and sample the ingredients. I sing over the process of mixing it all together. I lick the bowl at the end.
You can spend a lot of money on happiness but sometimes, the most simple things bring the most happiness.
Muchness 
Perhaps happiness *is* simplicity.
Once upon a time, I travelled across the world. I planned it relentlessly. For months, I dreamt of everything I love about travel; the trip to the airport, the flight, the itinerary planning, all the practicalities. I envisaged that the very journey would bring about a happiness reserved for those lucky enough to experience a ‘trip of a lifetime’, such that this trip would have been for generations passed.
And it did deliver a happiness of sorts.
But there was a moment, now a vivid memory of a moment that transcended geography. It occurred on a beach, but I think it transcended geology. It happened as the blistering sun calmed and set about it’s daily descent, painting the sky with hues that confronted me with pure beauty, but I think this moment was irrespective of the postcard picture.
It was as somebody passed me, walking in the opposite direction. For a split second our eyes met and we shared a moment only the both of us will ever experience. Walking across that beach, trying too hard to take in the moment, determined to make my expenditure reap value, I was greeted with an broad smile, an expression of unconditional acceptance and a warm ‘hello’.
That was all it was. That was all it needed to be. It was as though that person had hugged my heart. The realisation of what surely mattered was revelatory; that all the planning, self-congratulation and wallowing in the material excesses of months of savings can’t hold a candle to an authentic delivery of warm wishes and a genuine expression of goodwill and best wishes.
Though I was grateful to have travelled so far to have experienced it, the lesson needn’t involve more than the return of positive energy delivered to any of those around us; an unexpected compliment, an uninvited dish prepared with kindness and delivered to a neighbour; a gift for no reason other than the joy to give. These plant the seeds that in time may spread and help to grow a world in which happiness is found within the most simple things we can do for each other.