I finished reading David Malouf’s The Happy Life: The Search for Contentment in the Modern World.

He is one of Australia’s greatest writers and I do own a couple of his books. This one was more of an essay into his pondering of happiness drawing upon literature, arts and philosophy to explain it. The last part of the book, he invites other writers to respond on their own thoughts.

He made me think about what happiness means to me and ultimately, my decision was “I’m living it”. Overall, I’m quite happy in my life. Sure, there are ups and downs, but on the whole, I have the freedom to choose and decide what I want to do in my day and what to think. I’m free to do my own actions and enjoy each day as it comes – the good and the bad – and have the wherewithall to deal with whatever comes my way.

I can stop to smell the roses. I can cook up an apple pie (as I did today) while playing The Smiths Best of CD loudly from my old CD player in my sunlight filled kitchen while the cat looked on.

That was happiness to me. Being there. At that time and place. That’s happiness.

Here’s some more of what he says about the differences between happiness (“caught by joyfulness in the moment”) and contentment.