Height of...Happiness

As salaam alaikum,

(I wrote this actually a few days ago, but am posting it now...)

If there's something else I don't often blog about, it's about happiness. I mean, in general, I think I talk plenty about the meaning of life, what's fulfilling to me, what's amused me...well, okay, that's a lie, I think I do talk about what makes me happy. Family medicine makes me happy, for example.

But there are just some times when my happiness goes above even that. This last week with my parents here vacationing over the river in Cambridge, I've had a few of those moments...not necessarily with them or because of them, but just in general.

One of them happened while I was...

- sailing out on the Massachusetts Bay, at Long Warf, seeing families enjoying the sunny day outside
- watching a clip of Glee and seeing how cute the Glee kids were and their excitement about seeing posters of themselves in New York
- biting into a plum, discovering that it was one of those that's purple inside, therefore sweet, then eating it

These moments inspire a level of happiness in me that I'm not quite able to explain. It's like...happiness at the cusp. It's like, it makes me so happy, I almost want to cry, but I don't...not because I'm holding back, but because I don't cross that threshold yet. And because crying is kind of a release of emotion, not crying sustains that happiness in my chest, and it makes my chest feel really light. It's a feeling that I can't exactly recreate, but the remembrance of the specific event or image does make me smile and I experience a similar lightness in my chest. It's pretty amazing.

So sometimes I get these feelings out of the blue, with nothing in particular happening, and I feel like it's a premonition. I had that feeling yesterday evening as my father dropped me off in front of my apartment. There were a bunch of guys crossing the street who must have just left the hospital because they had cups of coffee in their hands from coffee central. There was nothing quite that interesting about the guys except that as we passed them, I got that light feeling in my chest, though I wasn't smiling. And then I got this sudden premonition...something happy is going to happen to me in a few days time.

I had this feeling earlier, except the premonition was that it was going to happen "soon," which could be in a few months time...which is sooner than soon has ever been for me.

But now, it's a few days.

I don't know what to make of all of this happiness. I'm going to revel in it and take it to prayer. What better time do I have than this, smack dab in the middle of Ramadan!

Keep me in your du'as!