Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind.

“Pooh!” he whispered.

“Yes, Piglet?”

“Nothing,” said Piglet, taking Pooh’s paw. “I just wanted to be sure of you.”

-The House At Pooh Corner

"So many ways to know a person, it seems.A hand on the small of one’s back; the memory of a scent; two pairs of eyes meeting and crinkling into smiles that secretly know that under the crowded table a nudge was passed, between two differently-clad and -sized feet. And all around, all above, the world spins on

Then there is the sort of knowing, when you both sit in silence, that no one needs to say anything. It’s almost the same kind (but not quite) that is present when you fumble for words to say something, realize you can’t find the right ones, but still know that you were understood. You know a person by the way their eyes fill with tears; by the huskiness of their just-woke-up voice; by the smooth curve their laughter takes. Your fingers remember how naturally they fall into a clasp with another hand, your feet how easily they fall into step beside another.

We are strange creatures, we are. We can know another by the crash of a midnight wave, by the sun glancing off a seaside pier, by the tinkling laugh of a raindrop on a windscreen.
And sometimes, because it is the only way you can, you know a person by an ache in the shape of an absence. "

because happiness is so much more elusive,

so much more subtle

and fragile.

because, that feeling of peace

and contentment

is hard to grasp and almost impossible to describe

while pain is like a diabolical twin you inevitably come to know,

happiness is almost a stranger, whose face

is nothing more than a vague silhouette

often too transient, too subtle, too indefinable

to recognise

in the midst of the drudgery, sham and noise

that at times seem so ubiquitous.

as such, happiness for me,

has always been harder to write about.

how do you put that feeling into words,

without understating its significance,

or turning it into a cliched

hyperbole?

i guess it's in the little things.

it's in the way laughter is fuller,

and smiles come easier.

or how one finds greater strength

and positivity.

it's in the sense of peace

and security.

and in the gradual awareness

that you have the right to be here.

it almost scares me to say it,

but i am happy,

and it's the most amazing feeling in the world.

22/07/09