Fallen in Love With...Friday

Welcome to Friday everyone, it certainly has been a busy week. Time has been travelling so quickly for me since the half marathon, and while I am glad in a way because each day that passes quickly brings me closer to being in California I also hesitate to ever wish any of my life away because each day should be treasured.

Today as I was wandering through the glorious midwinter afternoon back to my car I started thinking about tonight's post and what I had fallen in love with this week. While there are links below to some things that have made me smile at how you can make friends even halfway across the world, made me hungry and made me think, this week, tonight's post is about how I have fallen in love with being aware of my happiness, something I have written about before, but really, can anyone be too happy?

This week I have fallen in love with being aware of my happiness, and I have to be honest, I don't care if people are looking at me a little strangely nowadays. I am in love with being happy. I want to be around happiness all the time. I want to shout from the rooftops about how happy I am, how I feel like there is a blue sky inside me and its cerulean beauty is written all over my face.
It is so easy not to tell people how happy you are. Sometimes it almost feels like bragging, like all we should bond over is shared miseries, compared miseries.
I can't help myself though. I am so acutely aware of how lucky I am to be this happy, about how I choose this happiness every day, every little moment.
Not that I don't get stressed, or scared, or even sad; however 99% of the time I feel like I am rolling in a paddock of lily scented bliss. In the times when I am a little down, especially when I am tired or lonely, I am aware that I need to make the effort to bring myself back to this happy. I know that it so clichéd to have a 'happy place' but it's more an awareness of the peace that you can find inside yourself even when the outside seems so overwhelmingly opposite to this.
I imagine if we were all born with some sort of celestial count down to our final days then we wouldn't waste a second of our years choosing to be unhappy.
Does happy mean perfect?
No. But I own the flaws that are mine and while some of them are charming and just part of my character, there are others that need a little fixing. That's okay because there is beauty in that discovery and moulding of myself.
Does happy mean no pain or worry?
No. But it does mean knowing that I am stronger than either of these and choosing the brighter side instantly weakens the power that pain and worry have over me.
So go ahead, look around your life and see how much you have to make yourself happy; what makes you lucky to be exactly where you are, living a life that is only yours to live.
Fall in love with being happy.

This week I have been so honoured that I have made friends with the amazing Cait (The 'Arty Runner Chick') who was so sweet about some prose of mine in a wonderfully reflective and insightful post of her own. Thank you for being such a lovely blog friend Cait!
A huge thanks also to everyone who has been leaving thoughtful comments on my recent posts. It is nice to know that my ramblings make sense to others :)
Tomorrow also marks one year since I became a vegetarian and to celebrate I think I'll have to make this beautiful Middle Eastern Pizza with Minted Tahini Sauce found on my new Aussie blogger friend Alissa's blog, Just Eat Love.
I have been caught up reading Geneen Roth's newest book 'Women Food and God' which is a thought provoking page turner about our relationships with our bodies, our lives and how everything is really revealed by how we choose to eat. It has certainly made me reflect on behaviours I have displayed in the past and how  it is important to be kind to ourselves.

I hope everyone has a wonderful start to their weekend this Friday night and I can definitely predict some baking in the chickpea kitchen this weekend.