Here's What Makes Meme Happiest; How 'Bout You'm?

The other day, my friend Becky printed a “meme” that she found on another blog, offering it for others to take and do with what they chose. I’d never heard the word “meme,” so I looked it up. Here’s one definition from Dictionary.com:

meme- n. A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.

Hmm.  Anyway, the meme was simply to list 10 things that make you happy. Fun game. My problem was that there was no way I could keep it to ten. So I cheated and condensed them so much that they got ridiculous. 

So finally I gave up and started listing specific times I remember being overwhelmingly happy, and it was such a nice exercise that I invite you to do your own. What I discovered was that my happiest moments seem rare and precious and have a transcendent quality that leaves me feeling as if I’ve been touched by the divine.

For example, when I lived in Denver I’d occasionally drive up the mountains alone to a spot in Estes Park that was on the very edge of Rocky Mountain National Park. I’d throw a jacket on and change my summer shorts and hike up to the top of a mountain, just beyond the snow line, and look down. That echo of infinite blue mountains and unmelting snow and endless beauty was so completely untouched by humanity that it caught the air in my throat and brought tears to my eyes, and I would find myself standing as still as I could and holding my breath because I was an outsider in a holy place too sacred for something as unworthy as my breathing, even. It was like being allowed to glimpse the face of God. There is always something ironic to me in being so small and humbled as to slip into a spiritual wormhole and become a part of something huge. That's when the human spirit truly takes wing.

And when I felt filled up and grounded again, I would carefully tiptoe back through my own footprints to leave the snow as untouched as possible so as not to sully it with my graceless humanity, and drive home, feeling at once lightened and enlightened.

There is such a thing as perfection...and our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth....Each of us is in truth an unlimited idea of freedom. Everything that limits us we have to put aside. ~Richard Bach