Smile.

I step from the building-- the one that provides me with the schoolish braining.
It's light outside when I exit the building-- something that I am still adjusting to.
The walk to my car is warm, breezy, and far too short.
Once in my car, and on the highway, I become bored with the pale black pavement and white lane markers. The world is much more interesting. (An unfortunate fact for my driving record...)
The clouds are swirled with shocks of purple and pink, the silhouetted curves of the darkened mountains dance along the highway, and all the while passing cars create an earth-like rhythm that flows through my '94 Geo Prizm's window pane, and then straight on through my body.

And I smile.
Then I laugh out loud.

And then, I think.

Maybe it's the beautiful weather that gets me to thinking, or perhaps it's the unexpected return of this year's light that makes my mind churn. It's funny how the change in seasons can do that to you. One minute you are 20 below freezing, the heater is all the way up, you are bundled in last year's out-of-style layers, and it doesn't matter how happy you try to be-- there is still a perpetual darkness that surrounds your mood, because at some point, you have to step outside. Then, when you feel like February has no choice but to eat you alive, March rolls around, and the dark that has followed you around all season is frightened away by a year-altering day-- one where the absolute measure of time is changed. It's as if the world is converted over-night-- the air smells green, the sky is clear, and that last-season puffy coat with the fur-framed hood you've been sporting all winter finds itself returned to the depths of your closet from whence it emerged last October.

But that's not what I'm thinking about as I drive along the interstate.

The song currently playing on the 'pod begins to fade, and a new, shuffled song discovers its voice being heard by the innermost crevices of my vehicle and myself. I think the song knows who's listening, because it chooses to make itself known at the perfect moment, the perfect time. The song name is deemed unimportant by me, but the fact that it's perfect is enough to make me smile. Not that it takes a lot to do that.

Which re-rails my train of thought, as I focus again on my journey.

Which is somewhat ironic, I think to myself about the previous thought, That I am again focusing on my journey. But not one journey; not my daily commute from Provo to Lehi. Rather, my life-long journey. The journey of me.

I chuckle at my cheesiness-- a quality in myself that I sometimes find irritating. Even so, I'm convinced, now, that it is part of my inherent nature. In moments of deep emotion, I simply cannot hold back the clichés.

I doesn't irritate me today, though.

Because the deep emotion I am feeling today is simple, complete, happiness.

I suppose there are a million things a person could assume they will learn from this journey that some (cheesy) people like to call life. I could probably make a list, but that would be annoying, and redundant, as you, reader, know exactly what you expect out of life. You know the things you strive to learn, the things you long to be greater at. If you cannot seem to muster some image from your imagination, let me ask you this: what did you do today? How did you feel while doing those things? Did you long to be somewhere else? With someone else? What means the most to you?

Today, as I drive down the interstate with the perfect tune in my head, the perfect breeze in my hair, and the perfect view on the horizon, I realize, what seems to me, the most important thing I could possibly realize at this point in my life, and perhaps within my lifetime.

I realize that I am happy.

I realize that independent of people, circumstance, weather, opinion, compliments, success, pride, knowledge and a million other things, I am truly, genuinely happy.

I love who I am.

I love what I stand for.

I am happy not because of what I am surrounded by, but rather, WHY I am surrounded by it. I am happy because I know that in this enormous, seemingly lonely world, I am never alone.

I am happy because I am a child of God.


The sun is blazing its final hurrah of today's setting now, and the purples and pinks have turned to blues and greys. I sigh as I pull over to the side of the road, as to not miss the last few minutes of today's rays. That sun was for me today-- to enlighten me to a fact that I have known all my life. As a sort of tribute, I pause my busy life to thank it for its message.


I smile, because I'm happy.
And I thank the heavens because I now know why.