my definition of happiness.

my therapist asked me the other day what i thought happiness was. how i would describe it in words were i asked to do so. here is what i have come up with.


happiness is what happens when you go to be on the hottest night of the summer, a night so hot you can't even wear a tee-shirt and you sleep on tops of the sheets instead of under them, although try to sleep is probably more accurate. and then at some point late, late, late at night, say just a bit before dawn, the heat finally breaks and the night turns cool and when you briefly wake up, you notice that you're almost chilly, and in your groggy, half-consciousness, you read over and pull the sheet around you and just that flimsy sheet makes it warm enough and you drift back into a deep sleep. and it's that reaching, that gesture, that reflex we have to pull what's warm -- whether it's something or someone -- toward us, that feeling we get when we do that, that feeling of being safe in the world and ready for sleep, that's happiness. 


so, i ask you. what is your definition of happiness?