All the right places

I have spent so much time in my life looking for things. I am always looking for my keys, my phone and my glasses. The glasses are an annoying thing to be looking for as you can’t see them when you’re not wearing them. I have probably also spent several months of my life rooting through handbags looking for whatever I put in there only a few minutes earlier.

The only thing I spent even more time looking for is – happiness. I have found it in all sorts of places, some of them expected, some of them unexpected. Usually in very small places. Also, it’s terribly elusive. One moment, you’ve found it, next moment, it’s gone! And the quest for it begins again.

On this trip, I found it in its usual hiding places: In the small moments of stillness when you’re the first person to set foot on a deserted island in the middle of nowhere at the break of dawn. Just below the summit of a mountain, with eagles circling the sky just above you. In the big smile that someone cracks at you when you have made their day – a guest, a colleague or even a stranger. Another happy moment was standing out on deck, all alone, and watching two kittiwakes argue over the best spot on our life boat. Or the moment when I stood, for the first time in my life, on the bridge and watched our ship slowly pull away from the dock on the first day of our journey.

Happiness, I have realised, also likes to hide away in the shadows of a bad day. On this trip, a friend knocking on my door with a milkshake in her hand when I was feeling a bit low was one of the happiest moments.

Now our trip is almost over and I am taking many happy memories of precious moments back, found in unexpected places at the other end of the world, headed to where happiness is easiest to find for me: Home. Because that’s where my loved ones are.