To my siblings
The nature of happiness is a complete mystery. It comes always as unexpected, undisguised, and unpredictable. Yet when it hits you there is an unmistakable familiar feeling of its necessity, that it has been needed in the most unlikely moment; that it has been asked for without your asking for it. It is like a wish becoming real without having wished it. It is in the nature of happiness that it eludes you the more you are conscious of your restless pursuit for it. It is a wild animal that detests being bound for it is itself boundless. It can enter the most secluded prison, it arises on the most ordinary of days, it slips into your shirt like a hand close by reaching for your waiting hand under the table, it takes refuge in solitude or in company, but it can never be a secret.
Happiness is the deeply familiar bond that reunites all. The placeholder which holds and transforms strangers into intimates.
In its own small and indestructible way it makes itself an event however stupid, trivial, or dangerous, however brief the duration which could mean a couple of seconds, but if you’re lucky becomes unforgettable.
To be happy is a reassurance that one is touched, therefore one is not alone.
Where does happiness come from?
One sunny October morning I took my brothers with their girlfriends to a local pastry shop, one of the best, in town. We sat at the back of the room overlooking a neighborhood decorated with ubiquitous yellowing trees. The windows were half open and there was just enough sunlight to warm us from the cold.
It was their first trip to Italy and with their significant others that made the entire trip even more special. We ordered from the bar all sorts of delicacies the locals eat regularly for breakfast. Croissants of all flavors, an assortment of pastries, and Tuscan sandwiches accompanied by cupfuls of cappuccino and glasses of soda and orange juice. It was a feast indeed.
It was a rare moment to celebrate. My brothers were visiting me from the other side of the world after some years of not seeing each other. That fact itself was a valid excuse for all the excess we had eaten for breakfast that wonderful morning.
Surely it was too good not to listen to what your visitors had to say about what you had to offer. Our youngest brother taking a lion’s bite on a croissant stuffed with pistachio cream could not contain himself: “Kuya Carlo, this is so good. I cannot trace the taste of this croissant to anything I have tasted before.”
Happiness is untraceable. It comes from everywhere and nowhere. You don’t go searching for it. It gets there before you. It finds you.
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