From Me to You

Happiness Inc: Summer is a State of Mind

They are summer’s dazzling foot soldiers – nothing can keep them down. Having lain dormant in the soil through winter, snow and deprivation, they rise and rise, showcasing their beauty and color. Everywhere you turn, the flowers are out, sharing their abundance, curiously crawling out of metal fences, climbing cheekily on to park benches and putting on a bigger show than the Queensborough Bridge glinting over the East River in all its metallic glory.

Walkers, moms with strollers and dog-watchers walk nonchalantly by, not acknowledging this blossom overdrive but internally each one is calmed and soothed by its goodness and its largesse.

What can seriously go wrong with the world when pigeons are shaking their heads and sight-seeing on the railings, dogs are sniffing each other out and wagging their tails, young lovers are running together and old couples are walking hand in hand? Even the homeless, for once, look happy, enthroned on park benches, chatting and eating a takeaway meal while their worldly possessions are jammed into a shopping cart parked in the most expensive real estate in New York, facing the waterfront. They are as much a part of the mosaic as anyone else and no cops or angry citizens mar the blue sky and cotton candy clouds scenario. It seems a universe of equals.

The silvery waters of the East River flow on and summer is being in a happy state of mind.