“Success is all within reach if you work hard.”
“With a little determination, your dreams are all within reach.”
And finally: “Happiness isn’t as far away as it seems — it’s all within reach if we learn to embrace the little things.”
Although hard work and determination are needed to accomplish any meaningful pursuit in life, learning to embrace the things around us sounds like a prescription too easy to work. But it does!
Yesterday at the airport, I picked up a few books, not too many, though, knowing that I had access to many libraries where I was going. But I like underlining and writing in the margins, mainly drawing exclamation marks and laughing faces (yes — I am notorious…). But poetry — I mostly read either in borrowed books that I keep too long or online (yes, not letting the still alive poor poets get financially gratified — but it is what it is — injustice reigns…) This time, I decided to add one to my small collection of paper poetry books that I actually possess, because of the poem whose original title is “A Gift” but was translated by the poet himself to “A Day So Happy”.
A Day So Happy
by Czesław Miłosz (1911–2004)
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers.
There was nothing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envy.
Whatever evil I had suffered, I forgot.
To think that I was once the same man did not embarrass me.
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up, I saw the blue sea and sails.
The words of the quoted poem reflect a mental state of earthly fulfilment. Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature shares here a gift received from Nature, but also from within himself. Through his senses, he perceives and experiences the grace of the surrounding nature, which his body and peaceful thoughts accept with hospitality and tenderness.
Are these soothing impressions equivalent to happiness? Or are they merely a fleeting effect of mindfulness and savouring a blissful moment?
This poem could depict happiness, contentment, and self-acceptance — but also a clear conscience, forgiveness, absolution, and freedom from anger, desires, envy, and jealousy. This may seem like a subdued form of happiness, but does that make it more accessible and less demanding? Easier to achieve? I don’t think so — quite the opposite.
There’s a paradox here: something seems so close, within reach and sight — yet such a moment must be preceded by the struggle to resist dwelling in anger and resentment, stubborn grievances, fantasies of revenge, shame, and guilt. For instance, the line: “What happened, I forgot.” Can one simply forget? Maybe so, if one were a titan or a god intoxicated with delusions of their greatness — but for most of the mortals, battered and wounded by losses and injustices, it is anything but easy to forget. Certainly not casually…
Or the phrase: “I wasn’t ashamed to think I was who I am.” (literally in the original) Full acceptance of everything one knows about oneself — not only in a magical moment, in a beautiful garden overlooking a blue sea with boats and sails, but in general? For the average person, this is almost unimaginable.
How many times have I sat across from someone generously gifted by life, who “couldn’t take it anymore”, despite a blooming garden or at least a terrace — maybe without the sea breeze and hummingbirds, but along the river, with an expensive car in the garage and hands-free of toil — they found themselves on the edge of despair. Marital problems, the spectre of bankruptcy due to a failed investment, or a daughter ostentatiously rebelling by choosing the embrace of a drug dealer, claiming that without those arms and drugs, she has no life left. There are many reasons why such individuals lose the ability to respond to the world's beauty.
I understand this. I, too, have been in difficult situations, and I remember that even then, vivid colours and light did not hold my attention too tightly.
The word happiness has no diminutives. It can be immense or at times so small it’s hard to notice.
Sometimes, we think that true happiness requires something more — that the senses alone are not enough.
The ability to feel joy, amazement, and awe at the world’s beauty… This becomes possible when peace settles in their mind and soul. When they are not driven by the desire to gain more influence or to possess many more material goods, no one they envy or bear ill will toward.
These transformations aren’t forced; they stem from personal growth, especially in social functioning. Expressing needs, managing emotions without aggression, empathy, forgiveness, and self-acceptance — such skills lead to a good quality of life — or, to put it more poetically, a happy life.
And so, happiness reveals itself as something near, nestled in the details of our daily lives. It lives in the first rays of morning light, in the moments when we pause, it lives in a heart unburdened by anger, envy, or regret. It emerges in the act of forgiving the past and embracing the lessons it left behind.
Happiness is not an extravagant reward; it’s a gift without fanfare, the one we give ourselves when we choose to see the beauty in simplicity, the peace, and the freedom in self-acceptance. It waits within reach, not bound by circumstances but by the space we create for it in our hearts. When we embrace the little things, when we tend to the gardens of our own lives, we find it — steady, profound, and precious to keep.
origianally published on: Medium