Ta-Dah!

Dear Readers, I kid you not. This woman danced down the escalator and struck this ta-dah pose as she waited for her family who followed closely behind (unfortunately, they were not the Von-Trapp Family Dancers.) She was so full of joy, that I could not help but smile. Her family, clearly used to this kind of behavior from dear mommy, smiled and laughed along with her.

This is the portrait of a woman celebrating life.

Picture two gears. One, is you. The individual. The other is the world around the individual. The machine they run is happiness. Every person has this gear within them. Most of the time, we are too focused on getting the first gear running, that the second gets neglected. We forget that it, too, needs some oil and perhaps to have the rust scrubbed off.

The machine cannot run with just one gear.

So let's say this machine is broken (as so many machines sadly are). We look at the first gear and we can't figure out what went wrong. We futz with it, we toy with it....nothing. So, we move onto the next gear. Examining it by itself. We focus on that. Futzing around...yielding no results. When we turn to our own ego to find happiness we become so consumed with "Why am I not happy?? What's wrong with me?" We change jobs. We move. We change majors. We change friends. We drink. We smoke. We seek professional help, we even turn to mood altering medication. And in some cases, the individual may need professional help or mood altering meds. But most of the time, if we step out of our ego and focus not on each individual gear, but rather on how the gears fit together...then after some elbow grease and soul searching the gears will lock into place and the machine will work.

Happiness comes does not come from the ego. Yet, it does not come from ignoring your ego and searching everywhere but yourself. It comes from exploring yourself within the world around you. It comes from celebrating the joys of the world around you...such as wrapping up a day spent with your beautiful family in New York City. If happiness beckons you, act on it. Who cares what people think as you dance down an escalator? You're happy! If you skip through the torrential downpour while spinning your umbrella Gene Kelly style...so what?

Celebrate life, ta-dah style.