This Is What Happiness Is...

Just imagine this for a second, and do your best to fill in all that I leave out, because I know that there is no way that words could do this justice.

You're lying on a hammock, wrapped in a sleeping bag with a blanket spread beneath you and over you, a pillow under your head. Your feet are bare, your best friend is peacefully asleep beside you. The moon is radiantly bright and casting a light across the yard and the lake behind you.
There's a somewhat cool breeze blowing across the water and causing you to sway the slightest bit, rock gently. The waves lap against the shore, which is a mere 3 feet to your right. The stars twinkle between the branches of the trees from which the hammock is suspended. The air is crisp and fresh, and the wind causes the leaves to rustle quietly against each other. You are perfectly warm, perfectly cool, perfectly comfortable. Somewhere off in the distance, you can hear a hundred of your very closest friends and family singing around a campfire, voices softened by the mile or so between you. Your eyes close and you drift to sleep.

Now it's a few hours later and you open your eyes, comfortable enough to stay half asleep, but alert enough to be aware that something has changed. A figure stands over you, but you are not afraid, only curious. He asks quietly if he woke you. You respond that it's okay. He chuckles and gently pushes the hammock so that it begins rocking lightly, then tells you softly that you can go back to bed, and walks away. You smile to yourself, knowing that you have nothing to fear.

When you wake up again, your're still not fully out of slumber. Fat, cool raindrops slosh down onto your face, but surprisingly, you don't care. You merely pull the blanket over your friends face, and over your own, and return to sleep.

And now, you're waking up for good, the sun shining warm against the brisk breeze, waves a little louder now, birds chirping. Voices carry down the trail and a group of teenagers in swimsuits with camping hair and sleepy eyes appear across the field from you. They smile and wave, continue talking amongst themselves, and make their way into the Sauna house by the edge of the woods.

You relax for a minute more, then sit up and, wrapping yourself in your blanket, slip your feet into your rainboots and lug your pillow and sleeping bag back up to the campsite with your friend at your side. You're greeted along the way by more of your friends, making their way down to the beach that you just left, walking barefoot through the mud, innocently tired faces and clothes twisted and hanging off of their shoulders, riding low on their hips. They smell like campfires and lakes and happiness.

Because this is what happiness is. It's that moment when you realize that, even at your very most vulnerable, not really awake, not really asleep, completely defenseless, you are not afraid. You are trusting, you are weak, you are helpless, and yet nothing bad comes of it. Instead, you are watched over and protected by people who you consider family although you may not even know your names. You are perfectly, wonderously, blissfully content.

That's how I spent my weekend.

I'm really, really lucky. I just forget it sometimes.