coconut

Coconut by Paul Hostovsky.

"Bear with me I want to tell you something about happiness it’s hard to get at but the thing is I wasn’t looking I was looking somewhere else when my son found it in the fruit section and came running holding it out in his small hands asking me what it was and could we keep it it only cost 99 cents hairy and brown hard as a rock and something swishing around inside and what on earth and where on earth and this was happiness this little ball of interest beating inside his chest this interestedness beaming out from his face pleading happiness and because I wasn’t happy I said to put it back because I didn’t want it because we didn’t need it and because he was happy he started to cry right there in aisle five so when we got it home we put it in the middle of the kitchen table and sat on either side of it and began to consider how to get inside of it."

Happiness and its pursuit can be so abstract and somewhat of an illusion, so I really like the idea of trying to characterize how it manifests itself in our everyday life.

For me for instance, happiness was in how this poem inspired me and made me run out of the house this afternoon in search of coconuts, with my heart full of wonder. It was in finally finding a whole box of them hiding under the shelves of a little Mexican market. It was in catching myself sitting on the floor of the store taking pictures while other shoppers wondered what the heck I was doing. It was in coming home with two coconuts without knowing how I was going to get into them. It was in asking my husband for help, watching him google it, then seeing him come back with a screw driver and a hammer. It was in taking the time to do a silly spontaneous project like this, and it was in how the two of us found ourselves in our kitchen, at the end of an ordinary day, along with the coconuts, finally open.

Can you share with us any images of how you've captured tangible happiness around you?

Comments

[Rambles with Reese]

I love this posting! It's so true. Happiness is very abstract and what one views as happiness is so different from someone else's, but a little child's idea of happiness is always the same; and there's such beauty in learning from children and being reminded of what happiness truly is - a moment...a look....a taste....a smile.

Thank you for sharing your story and photo!

[Marcie]

What a wonderful post!!! Love hearing 'happiness' from a child's point-of-view. It sounds so simple..and - in fact - it really is.
Maybe as simple as a brightly colored birdhouse on a grey winter day:
http://www.marciescudderphotography.com/index.php?showimage=1083

[Katrina Kennedy]

Thank you.

This post hit me right in the heart. I literally feel choked up imagining the tears in aisle five. Perhaps because I can so easily see my own 4 year old with arms outstretched. I love that you took this project on.

My tangible happiness comes in the form of the simple words, yes we'll look at legos spoken to a little boy in really good light.

http://ianck.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-to-photograph-your-4-year-old.html

[pam]

Beautiful post. This is what life is all about. Those little moments.

[cdscott]

Great post! We adult-types need to reminders to bring the kid in us out every now and then. Life is so much better than way!

Here are 2 posts I did recently on just that idea.

http://courtneysablogger.blogspot.com/2010/01/kid-for-day.html
http://courtneysablogger.blogspot.com/2010/01/taking-up-my-own-challenge.html

[lucy]

love this -- and i remember feeling that way about coconuts! drinking the milk straight out of the little holes.... yum.

here's how to get happy sitting at a red light on a grey winter day:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucyloomis/4334054256/

[KimA]

Happiness.....it's found in so many little places.

This is my happiness. It's a photo of my niece that had a brain tumor. She's tough. She's a fighter. She has 5 children. This day, happiness was found in her hair. Hair that grew back after surgery. Hair that used to be perfectly straight but came back curly. Just hair. Happiness was found here. :)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22545991@N07/4372370303/

[curiousillusion]

Awww love this. And as a side note, happiness is totally one of my favorite words and has been for years.

To me, happiness is pink gerbera daisies. Even if I'm the only one buying them for myself:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/curiousillusion/4344482241/
And even if they die in less than a week. :p

[bright and blithe]

So true...it's the little things. I've been reflecting on how life transforms my ordinary kitchen into a sanctuary...http://brightandblithe.wordpress.com/2010/02/18/sanctuary/

[Puna]

This is my happiness!

http://lifesignatures.org/wordpress/2010/02/february-16-a-celebration-of-motherhood/

[Heather M.]

What a great story! TFS! It's my first time posting here but I love this blog. I've been following for a couple years now and always leave so inspired.

Happiness is still being in love 10 years later...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/30912270@N03/4371305049/

[Elizabeth]

Happiness is a sunny day at the beach in Feburary and finding all the creative structures being built out of things the ocean had returned.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/elizabethmeier/4363431062/

[krista]

i love people. these little girls to me perfectly depicted the happiness in the moment...
http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=view&id=445906
http://www.sxc.hu/browse.phtml?f=view&id=445905

[cigi]

Great post. I think we drive ourselves crazy chasing after happiness as if it is some continuous state of being that can be achieved when, in fact, it is most likely to be found in small moments and simple pleasures and gratitude.

That said, seeing a butterfly never fails to make me happy. I love them for their symbolism as well as their beauty:

http://instamaticgratification.wordpress.com/2010/01/01/01365/

[Jade Sheldon]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmsheldon/4372873713/

[elk]

that was one great post Alex!!

I was tired at the end of my work day...and it was cloudy ..but as I was pulling out of the parking lot the sight just made me happy...stopped..car in park...snap shot ...smile..such an ordinary moment..

http://redorgrayblackandwhite.blogspot.com/2010/02/meeting.html

[damiec]

wonderful poem and wonderful post

others have said it, but there is something completely obvious and unvarnished in the happiness of a child. seeing it in my children helps me re-connect with it myself

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22487105@N06/3920952921/in/set-72157618298145718/

[Anali]

That was beautiful! I was in the grocery store earlier this evening and considered buying a coconut. I didn't. And now I feel like I should've!

I agree that happiness is often about the little things. Those little joys in life. Like when I saw a flash of red today.

http://analisfirstamendment.blogspot.com/2010/02/harbinger-of-spring.html

[June]

When he's happy, I am happy.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/junedel/4371431522/