As you know, or might just have known and forgotten temporarily, I enjoy my time travelling to and from work/home because it allows me a relative state of idleness and temporal, in a matter of speaking, wherein my mind can do what my mind loves to do best.
Today was a hodgepodge of weather. I'd almost dare to say almost an amalgamation of all 4 seasons that this part of the world experiences, however the temperature did not dip enough to sneak Winter through the back door.
However, if I may be so bold to defy my own logic, I may actually allege that the frigidity that accompanies Winter was actually experienced; on the last bus home, the driver flaunted his prerogative as operator of the vehicle and abused the privileges that accompany such designation in regards to the AC.
But I digress. My point being, that on the ride home, my mind...digressed.
I had stepped out of my workplace in the midst of a humid and warm atmosphere, I stepped off the train to be confronted with a lashing downpour with accompanying percussion and visual special effects. As I sat on the bus that would finally take me to my neighbourhood, I took my eyes off the book I was reading, now and then, to let myself daydream.
Not that I had to give myself permission to do so, not at all - my ever-active mind decides to prevaricate whenever it so wishes. It bows to no will, much less my own. (Yeah, so I exaggerate.)
There is something that happens to me when I find myself sitting idle on a vehicle for which I am not responsible and not in control. As I sit and take the proverbial leash off my mind, it runs happily to the trees it wishes to marks its territory at, and runs here and there as far as it can, after that scent that it is so focussed on.
When I sit there, and taking in the scenery that presents itself out whichever window my eyes are glued to, when my mind lets go of the trivial idiosyncrasies of the material world such as work and the people around me, my emotions seem to accompany that state of abandonment and for some reason I enter a world wherein I feel content and something akin to bliss.
There is something that happens to me when this happens to me, and the best way I can describe it is that it is as if I have fallen in love.
For those of you so totally anti-love, anti-mushy, anti-gushy, don't tune out so soon. For those of you who are so totally pro-mush, pro-gush, pro-ooh la la, don't get too excited.
There isn't anything rash about the feeling. It is simple....calm. It is simply tranquility. It is my Happy Place.
Where is my Happy Place? I can't put my finger on it. If you give me a map, perhaps my eyes would stray here and there and yet know inside somehow where it is, however, there is not anything tangible about my happy place.
A happy place is rather a state of being, all entangled with the essence of everything that contributes to it. Sometimes, it can be such a strange fusion of assorted flavours that it seems almost impossible that these ingredients could ever make the ultimate recipe. But it is true. Sometimes, it could be a dash of sorrow, a dash of consternation, a nip of anger, a pinch of desolation, and yet they make the final result what it is.
Like those ingredients we could never consume a great quantity of, their use in moderation makes them essential when they are added into the great mix of everything.
So strangely, happy does not mean a pure quantity of joy, or of positivity. Happy can mean sad. Happy could mean sorrow. Because, just as light is never fully understood until dark is experienced, happy can never be truly happy, the very essence of happy, without sad. Not an original concept at all, but like all valid and valuable truths of life, however old they are, it remains just as enlightening.
This is what my mind does when it does what it loves and does best; it leads me to temptation, it falls in love.
