It was hard at first, understanding what Happiness meant for you, that mercurial combination of feeling both grounded and ready to take flight.  Sometimes it still is.

You had read books and heard stories and watched others as they found their way to Happiness.  And you spent many years in search of their version of that elusive creature.  You went out and did the things that seemed to brighten other lives, but they did not quite do so for you.  You found no satisfaction in giving yourself over to a life of solitude and studies, nor much fun in late night carousing--that was loneliness of a different sort.  Neither gave you the roots and the wings you wanted.

So you stayed in and did the things that brought you past enjoyment, but they did not fill your heart with the deep gladness you were searching for.  They began to feel like an old film reel that you kept looping through, out of habit, any sense of love worn away when you began to feel trapped in this spent spool.  No, the Happiness you were looking for was something altogether new, something you hadn't dared yet to live. 

You wanted a new way of experiencing your life: adventures, harmless frivolity to carry away the heaviness that had filled your shoes like rocks weighing you to this earth.  And yes, something that pulled you away from your books, your thoughts (although this last part is written furtively so as not to offend your words or your library that hovers over you as you scribble this).  You love them dearly; they are often more real to you than the world you live in.  But that's just it: your happiness must also come from the here and now as well as the dreams and what-may-comes.

Slowly, you set about courting your Happiness, gently calling it toward you each day as you took one step and then another towards a new way of being, allowing your roots to cradle you as you flexed your wings, so long unused.  You are ready to taste the world, savor its sweetness as you would a thick spool of honey, what now replaced your old worn real.  There, in that small promise of fuller living, you found it: Happiness in your own way.  It was books and words, but life and living too.