I’m a list-oriented person.
I thrive off organization, I’d be completely lost without my planner, and, as I said, I need my lists. A few months ago, I created a document on my computer for summer. It wasn’t a “To-Do” list, but more or less a series of goals I wanted to accomplish and things I wanted to experience.
The document, fittingly titled, “How I will spend summer 2k15” is then broken down into smaller sections for say, “daily goals” or “mini trips” or even “school related.” Of course, The Smile Project and writing have their own pages and underneath the latter, one bullet point simply reads: “Write the Stickies.”
The stickies refers to the sticky note tool that probably every computer has. I started out with one sticky note, a favorite quote:
“They believed that what made them vulnerable, made them beautiful.”
-Brene Brown
That sticky note is still there as are a few other important quotations. But slowly it began evolving into subtle notes I left for myself. Things to write about, ideas to uncover, blog posts to dream up... My desktop was overrun by blocks of yellow, purple, and white squares with ideas begging to be explored.
So today, as I sat down to write my blog, I found myself wracking my brain over a few options I had in my head. As I got ready to pull up a blank document, I instead bumped the sticky note tab, coloring my screen with inspiration.
I clicked through a few of them, wondering which thought I should turn into a full-fledged post when instead I found this single sticky note, buried under a layer of quotes and half written stories:
"I was happy today."
That’s all the sticky note says. I don’t remember putting it there and I can hardly dream up what it was in reference to. But I thought nothing of it and moved on. I wasn’t going to write about it. Even as I began typing this a few minutes ago, I wasn’t thinking about that.
But then I pulled the sticky notes up again and realized something else. You’ll have good days and bad days. You’ll have up moments and those that are, well, not necessarily perfect. But overall, if you can look up at the ceiling before your eyes surrender to sleep and think “I was happy today,” then I’d call it a pretty good life.
Things don’t always have to be perfect. No one life can be filled with only goodness. But is up to us to find the goodness in the life we are living. If at any moment today, you found yourself laughing, smiling, or loving, then you can rest easy.
Because you were happy today.
And that’s exactly enough.