People are waving at me right now, standing on ginormous floating beds of flowers. 

Am I supposed to wave back?

I mean, they’re behind the digital pixels and glass screens of television. 

They can’t see me.

But they all look so happy.

And that’s been a rare sighting these days, especially behind digital pixels and glass screens.

Are they?

Happy?

When I was younger, I believed that happy was a permanent achievement, something waiting around the next bend, never wavering once attained. Modeled, of course, by the television of my youth, typified by the day-in-the-life perfection of The Cosby Show. 

Which, we know now, was not perfect at all. 

As I got older, I believed that happy was not a permanent achievement, but an impossible dream. How could happy exist in a personal vacuum of unmet expectation, or on an existential level, where humanity seemed to be ruining both its home and each other?

And then, I landed here.

Here, where gratitude lives louder than any unmet expectation.

Here, where extremes don’t survive in life’s swinging pendulum. 

Here, where the growing awareness of my mortality reminds me of how short life really is.

Here, where there is still time.

Here, where happy is.

People are waving at me right now, standing on ginormous floating beds of flowers.

I just waved back.