so as you know….I’ve entered an art competition – see here.

Last night the ‘winners’ were announced and here they are:

I am really happy for these artists!

“Which brings me back to happiness, and a quick look at the word.

Our primary meaning now is the feeling of pleasure and contentment’ a buzz, a zestiness, the tummy upwards feel of good and right and relaxed and alive…you know….

But earlier meanings build in the hap – in Middle English, that is ‘happ‘, in Old English, ‘gehapp’ – the chance or fortune, good or bad, that falls to you.  Hap is your lot in life, the hand you are given to play.  How you meet your ‘hap’ will determine whether or not you can be ‘happy’.

What the Americans, in their constitution, call ‘the right to the pursuit of happiness’ (please note, not ‘the right to happiness’), is the right to swim upstream, salmon-wise.” pg 24 from the book: Why be happy when you could be normal? by Jeanette Winterson