I used to imagine happiness as a currency.

If I do this now, I’ll be happy later. Say this, you’ll be rewarded in the end. Life isn’t based off your happiness, it’s based off of what you achieve. What can I give, so as to get?

I’m used to a mindset spliced between realism and abject fiction. You exist in your own world and fuel your own dreams, but on some days, you’re as significant as the next digit in a phone book. A replica of a multiple of a standard.

I have spent the past 21 years surrounded by a family that could not love me more, friends I wouldn’t hesitate to call on a moment’s notice, and offered opportunities that suffice no dollar amount. I have drank up moments of pure joy. Complete and crystallized droplets of happiness that trickle down my throat and explode my vision like liquid rays of sunshine.

We know things by their opposites. The harmlessness in a laugh shared by friends, from the malignancy in a sneer or snicker. A soft tumble into grass against the slam of concrete pavement followed by gravel digging into knees. A job well done from utterly missing the mark. A sigh from a huff. Happiness is no trade-off, but I understand the similarity in such obscurities.

Happiness is not gauged through a thermometer, or archaically via sundial. It is not audible like the cicadas at night, nor sensitive as the inside of a hound puppy's baby-pink, inner ears.

How do you describe a “happiness?” Is it distinguished by what it is not? Easily spoken about, told as a tale of lore?

Happiness is the sister of faith. A tiny token, like pennies on a fountain floor, but with with endless depth and volume. Happiness is personal. She likes to tickle and tease, to ease and placate. She is not a violent fighter, she is not a sightless lover. She is a hopeful, ardent burning, reddened as a child's cheeks after a fierce winter snow.

I used to feel happiness, thinking I created her, molded and kneaded with stained, clayed hands or snapped my fingers impatient for her spark. I said, “When I find my purpose I will be happy.” But if you don’t even know your purpose, how can you possibly recognize happiness?

Your happiness. She may even be waiting in the wings like your guardian angel. The angel that breathes a sweet breeze over your face to erase all the day’s worries behind a purple sheet of night air.

Happiness is all around us; if we stay humble, patient and kind she's easier to find than you may think.