The Happiness Trait
"Hope the rest of your day is lovely!" the woman at Starbucks in Davis Square beams at me as she hands me my green tea latte. This is a ritual I adhere to religiously. My weekend evenings after lab are incomplete otherwise. I have a feeling this isn't another redundant line that she casually throws at all of her daily interactions. She genuinely wants me to have a good one.
It's currently 95 degrees outside and my skin is tingling from the relentless summer heat. As always, my hair is the mess shadowing my eyes. I laugh at the thought of getting hit by a car in the place I know like the back of my head. My thoughts drift to the apartment; it's in the same state I left it in this morning. A bloody mess, organized chaos erupting from every direction. My shoulder is throbbing under the weight of my bag. I want to cut it off but I refrain for the obvious reasons. I'm cradling it in my arms now. Just like a baby, and I smile inwardly because I'm going to see a baby at dinner tonight. But I look ridiculous. What will people think? But of course no one's looking. The only person bothering me is myself.
I laugh at my own discomfort. I feel like a preppy dork now. Hopeful.
I'm eagerly anticipating my visit home next month, where my friends and family are waiting for me. I suddenly realize how I'm exploring a new place almost every alternate week- New Jersey, Florida, Arizona, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Minneapolis, Rhode Island. I love embracing opportunities to explore new places and dimensions. In fact, I'm going to a new beach this weekend and I'm having trouble deciding which of the three new books to take with me. I think it's a good dilemma. I love Boston the most. It gives me immense comfort to think that I can simultaneously call two places home, even though they are separated by an ocean.
My intermittent daydreaming comes to an abrupt end when I finally reach the gym. It feels as though I'm physically incapable of taking another step but I'm determined to somehow muscle through it. Although I'm exhausted, I'm getting more energetic by the minute. I'm a paradox; my body is a machine and I can will it to do anything I want. Calories look better on the elliptical display anyway. They're even playing my type of music at the gym. Bless the Lord! Because my headphones are currently dead. It's an even greater relief when the water pressure in the fountain is better than usual, because I can't open the bottle of water I bought from CVS an hour ago. Clearly I need to come here more often.
I'm glad I got a good workout because now I can appreciate the fried calamari and mussels I'm having for dinner. I'm going to watch "Bridget Jones Diary" for the hundredth time when I get home- the eternal sucker for RomComs and seafood. Some people find it disturbing how I can never sit through a movie in dead silence. But I swear, my commentary could be it's own show!
Why am I writing all this? Because I can.
I want to count my daily blessings. I believe that one of the biggest idiosyncrasies of human nature is allowing a single bad moment to be more strongly attributed than all the good ones. We're all just too human. However, I refuse to let my bad days leave the most lasting impressions, and because I'm a cautious optimist, at this moment, for many indescribable reasons, I am inconceivably happy.