100 Happy Days

GC and I were walking to the bus stop the other morning and he asked if I wanted to do the 100-Day Happiness Challenge with him.

“Absolutely,” I said. “What is it?”

So here’s what it is. You can start anytime. You register. Every day you take a picture of something that makes you happy that day. It doesn’t have to make you happy all day. It doesn’t have to make anybody else happy. It’s not a competition. Just one thing that made you happy for a moment of your day. You post that picture to whichever social media platform you’ve chosen (I chose instagram, but I’m also posting some of them to facebook), using the hashtag #100happydays. You do that for a hundred days.

We’re on Day 5. I’ve posted pictures of the Bobby McFerrin concert, my bunny out for a walk, the aromatherapy garden near the Fletcher wildlife garden, my massage therapist’s room, and Canada Day on Parliament Hill.

I’m really liking this challenge, and I’ll tell you why. It’s making me realize that there are a lot of happy moments in my days, despite my depression. When the bunny does a happy leap or I get a whiff of lemon or I arrive home from work or GC brings me a cup of coffee or I get a glimpse of the new baby lovebird in the nest…there are just a few of the many things every day that give me little jolts of joy. The 100-Day Happiness Challenge just makes me more aware of them.

Not all of them are easy to photograph, of course. Like today, the Snowbirds did a fly-by in formation over Parliament Hill, and I’ve never seen them so low – it was quite thrilling and it was one of those quintessential happy-to-be-Canadian moments. But it was over in a split second and I didn’t get a picture. And later, on the way home, a nice breeze cooled us down from the extremely hot muggy weather; I would have liked to have taken a picture of that happy breeze.

And that new baby lovebird in the nest? His name is Solo. I haven’t taken any pictures of him yet because I think it might upset Billie and Lester. GC and I haven’t allowed Billie and Lester to have any babies for several years now. Overpopulation and all that. So whenever they’ve laid an egg, we’ve refrigerated it overnight before returning it to them. That way the eggs never hatch. Kind of sad, but necessary. Anyway, I decided with this latest clutch of eggs, which was their second clutch this spring, that I would let them keep one egg and raise one baby. They’ve tried so hard for so long and it made me sad to keep disappointing them. So I drew a happy face on one egg and put it back in the nest. I drew an X on each of the others and put them in the fridge overnight. Baby Solo hatched on June 26th. Billie and Lester are very happy.