For Saturday, January 19: Happiness is...

Happiness is a fresh baked cookie. Otis Spunkmeyer

If you are familiar with Otis Spunkmeyer cookies then you know that happiness, for him, is indeed a fresh baked cookie and he shares that happiness with others. I happen to agree with him because I am a "cookie monster" but it got me to thinking. How would I finish the statement "Happiness is..."? What's happiness for me? What's happiness for you? And once you know what it is, do you share it with others?
There's actually quite a few things that make me happy. (Different than joy btw, and that's a different blog) Baking makes me very happy. And part of the happiness I get from it is sharing it with others. (This is how Otis and relate.) Reading makes me happy. I don't share it with others by reading to them but I do share books I love with others and share what I think of the books I read with others. (Check out my Bookworm blog here.) Giving gifts of all shapes and sizes makes me happy and while I don't get to do it as often as I would like or want to when I do I am wildly happy to put a smile, hopefully, on another person's face and in their heart.
So I guess I can't finish off the statement "Happiness is..." with just one thing but I do know I can share what makes me happy with others. How about you?

Comments

Butter someone up

There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.

A dime a dozen

"It's said that in the year 1796, the first U.S. dimes were produced for circulation. Hence, it would make sense for this phrase to originate sometime after." Read more here . Today the phrase carries the meaning that something is cheap or without value if it can be lumped in with other similar or exactly-like things. It's more of an insult than anything.

Life according to van Gogh...sort of

There are two ways of thinking about painting, how not to do it and how to do it; how to do it -- with much drawing and little color; how not to do it -- with much color and little drawing. Vincent van Gogh in a l etter to Theo van Gogh, April 1882 Life is a little bit like today's quote from van Gogh. Some of us live life focusing on the drawing - the details - and have very little color. Others of us go for the color and forsake, to a degree, the drawing - the details. Unlike painting, according to van Gogh, one is not wrong over the other but somewhere in between the two would be the best I would think. If you look at some of van Gogh's paintings I feel like you can see where he might have struggled between the "how to do it" and the " how not to do it" (as he admittedly loved color so much but knew he had to focus more on the drawing) and that seems to be reflected in his life as well. In the end he wasn't able to find the ...

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