This morning I was reading some gossip about the MTV Movie Awards, and someone who is a big Twilight fan wrote that when they won Best Movie, it was the happiest moment of her life. Nooooow, I don't know about anyone else, but that seemed a little bit sad to me! I started to try and think of the happiest moment of my life so far, but couldn't come up with anything too specific, mainly because I think the happiest moments in life are usually small moments, things you don't really realize at the time, but that stay with you. Maybe it's different for people who have gotten married or had children, or some great love story, I don't know.
When I first started using Netflix, I rented a movie from Japan that I can't remember the name of right now. It was about a group of people who worked in this sort of limbo between life and death that the recently deceased would have to stop in, and they would have a few days to choose their happiest moments from their lives. The employees would then re-create the moment for the person, and film it. Then they would all go watch the moments together on a screen in a theater and the person whose moment they watched would disappear into his or her happiest moment for the rest of eternity. I liked that idea very much, although I don't know if I would want to pick just one.
But if I had to, I would probably choose a moment that happened when I was about 11 or 12. It was late afternoon / early evening. I was riding my bike down the street on which I lived, and it was either a Saturday or a Sunday in spring, because I know I had had a really fun day playing with all my friends in the neighborhood. And as I was riding my bike, with the wind in my hair, the familiar homes and trees and cars passing by me, I felt perfectly content and happy and at one with everything around me. I promised myself I would always remember that moment, and I do--I even remember what the sky looked like.
There have certainly been other moments, "big" moments, when I felt very happy or content or peaceful, but most of them have been ruined by things that resulted from them in one way or another. Not that that should diminish the impact they had on me at the time, but I suppose I feel that only oneself can truly be relied on to make one happy, and so that moment of solitude and contemplation in a place I loved has to stand above the rest.
Anyway, I wonder if you died tomorrow and had to choose a moment, would you choose something big, like holding your child for the first time, or something a little smaller?
1 comment:
The happiest moments of my life were definitely the big ones: marrying Richard, finding out I was pregnant, completing my doctorate, etc.
But there are other special moments all of the time that aren't so grand. I remember one day at UF, I sat at a random bench after class and just watched people walk by and I felt good being me. Sometimes I'm happy just laying in bed in the morning when I don't have to jump up immediately. Thursday is our 3D ultrasound, and I am definitely hoping that's one of the happiest moments in my life thus far :-)
I think when you say something was THE BEST then it's often difficult to ever top - so i'd like to think that I've had many happy moments in my life, where I enjoyed who I was with, what I was doing, and being myself.
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