Happiness is...

"You know, you only live once and we really ought to make the most of it and we ought to be happy", says Bill Bryson, the famous author. 

He dives into life, "I'm intensely interested in all the things. I pick up the paper and immediately I want to know everything there is to know..." I Just love his attitude to life.

This has nothing to do with PF. It's another random post musing and mulling over life.

Thus far in this life, I have met two people who have been unhappy with their life. Always sad and prone to regret something that they have or haven't done.

Prone to introspection and self reflection, I have thought about why some people are so unhappy with their life to the extent that they are miserable and discontent. I think about the wonderful brevity and transiency of youth being wasted on the young and unappreciated. 

We can choose to live our life in contentment and happiness or we can choose to live the very same life that we are given in discontent and unhappiness. Which one will you choose? 

I love RAKs. The random acts of kindness from strangers who help you carry heavy items, who give way to you in peak hour traffic, who smile at you, who offer you to proceed ahead of them in check out lines because they have a full trolley. Who get up and stand so that you can sit down. The list is fortunately endless =)

So I thought I'd start my weekend off with what happiness is to me and I hope if you are reading this, you will also start your weekend off with a list of things that make you happy and appreciate the beauty of life =)

1. Spring is coming, cold Winter dreary days are becoming more infrequent. Our garden is bursting into life with Tibouchinas, Daisies, Clivias and Arum Lillies, herbs popping up from seeds and buds of the Hydrangea blooming. Makes me happy:

2. Celebrating the joys of this winter by going on ski trips with family and friends makes me happy (except for the long queue for lifts lol). Check out the beautiful and awesome vista:

3. Being able to find time to cook and indulge in food fantasies makes me happy:
Bean sprout salad:

 Pickling baby cucumbers in a sugar, salt vinegar mix and throwing in some chillies and coriander seeds for variation:

 Pickling long green chillies:

 Madly creating and throwing together variations of salads even though it's winter:

3. Making time to blog again =)

4. Really enjoy the old skool way of charcoal barbecuing compared to just using the gas barbeque all the time =) :

5. Eating an entire box of Krispy Kreme donuts all by myself without giving a single thought to how fatty or cholesterol laden the fatty blobs of goodness are =)

Overall, spending precious time with family and friends makes me happiest. Being able to indulge in interests and hobbies makes me happy. Being able to work as much as I like makes me happy (workaholics can rejoice). Learning something new everyday makes me happy. 

I hope this inspires you to think about the things that makes you happy too. I feel so blessed in this life to have such amazing and wonderful family, friends and acquaintances from work and in the wider social context. Life is too short to be grumpy and unhappy =)