Simple

Could it really be as simple as this? Happiness, I mean.

To spend a morning playing piano until the keys feel like they’re growing out of your fingers and you can go anywhere in the landscape of music you want.

To have lunch with an alum student taking a gap year to travel around India and then bike across the U.S. from the East Coast. His life ahead of him with just enough plans to imagine and dream about what’s ahead and miles of space for possibilities to blossom and open in the great and beckoning unknowns that await him.

To bike around a lake and along the ocean and through the park and feel the tightness in the legs like the power in the piano fingers, the body tuned and toned and inhaling the cool ocean air beneath the hot summer sun.

To prepare a simple meal of fresh corn from the Farmer’s Market, roasted peppers stuffed with goat cheese, mixed green salad with early girl tomatoes and small glass of beer. To eat slowly, savoring and not too much (for a change!).

To wheel out the ancient TV, put in the DVD and sit with my Dad again (in his new invisible form) to watch Perry Mason and see how it holds up.

Is this all it takes to be happy? Amidst all the pomp and circumstance and conflicted relationship and torturous self-doubts and outrage and disappointment and heartache and heartbreak, could it really be as simple as this?

Yes it can. 

Yes it is.