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3,000 Days of Happiness

Liz Buechele

Day 3000:

Happiness is.. a comprehensive look at over eight years of intentional joy. I started posting ‘Happiness is’ when I was a moody 17-year-old. I didn’t know a thing about Happiness. And still, for 3,000 consecutive days, I made an intentional decision to figure it out. There is nothing inherently earth-shattering about this idea and no part of it is something that anyone else couldn’t do. Its simplicity is what makes it beautiful.

Every single day since I was 17 and a half years old, has been punctuated by daily joys. But the thing is? So was every single day when I was 14 and 15 and 16. There has always been so much joy enveloping me, I just wasn’t able to see it. It wasn’t until I forced myself to record these moments, that I began to actively look for them and it wasn’t until I was actively looking for them that they began to appear to me everywhere I looked.

I talk about Day 1 a lot when I write about The Smile Project. But I should spend more time talking about Day 2. If I’m honest, I wasn’t sure what I was doing on November 9th 2011 when I posted my first ‘Happiness is.’ I didn’t even know what a ‘Happiness is’ was. And were it not for a single moment in the Costco parking lot with my mother the next day, I probably would have forgotten about it entirely.

You see, I had jumped on the cart and was skating down the gradual hill in the parking lot, much to my mother’s concern, when an older lady across the aisle shouted over, ‘that’s okay! My husband still does that!!’

A smile. A wave. A moment that, when I settled into the passenger seat of the car and buckled my seatbelt, I realized, made me happy. Something to post about for Day 2.

There have been many times over the past eight years where I thought about giving up, where I was sure I didn’t want anything to do with this project - even as recently as a few months ago. But there is always something. After all, my brain’s been through 3,000 days of unintentional Happiness boot camp.

For a multitude of obvious reasons, I am not the same person I was when I was 17. And I owe so much of that to not just that car ride that prompted ‘Day 1,’ not just to the lady in the Costco parking lot, who gifted me “Day 2,” but to every single person who has been a part of my life in the 3,000 days since.

Thank you. I love you. Here’s to 3,000 more.

Here’s a link to read all the Happiness is ever posted (updated through Jan 25 2020). Check it out and share it with someone you love!

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